Amazon Kindle: Your Highlights

“I feel like your problem is that you’re trying to judge all things in the abstract before you do them. That’s your tragic mistake.”Read more at location 254

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People with BPD often don’t have a sense of what they like, what their values are, or who they are.Read more at location 472

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one thing that sometimes works is just to give your loved one the time to get those emotions down by holding off on reacting at all for a moment. The woman in my office who heard everything as criticism and got more and more upset no matter what I said finally began to feel her emotions subside when I just got quiet.Read more at location 704

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The explanation of what creates BPD that you just read is called the biosocial theory of borderline personality disorder: your loved one came by this problem by virtue of innate emotional traits plus an environment that, intentionally or unintentionally, invalidated his or her childhood emotional experience.Read more at location 910

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Learn to ask what the other person needs by asking whenever a friend confides in you.Read more at location 1320

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Anger cannot be maintained in the face of compassion.Read more at location 1371

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Whenever emotion begins to build, stop and validate again.Read more at location 1388

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Don’t correct or contradict your loved one in an attempt to reassure: Say “I know you feel like you’re stupid.” (Don’t go on to say “But you’re not.”)Read more at location 1393

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When you pay attention to and label your experience, your emotion immediately begins to regulate.Read more at location 1479

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Think of yourself as a coach. Your loved one is still the athlete and could compete without you, but things will go much better if you are on the sidelines.Read more at location 1682

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people with BPD are naturally emotional and have learned to distrust and discount their emotions.Read more at location 1801

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To someone with BPD, any response that doesn’t validate his experience of pain is unsympathetic. So trying to help him solve the problem is validating only if you acknowledged how much pain the problem is causing. Trying to downplay the magnitude of the problem, on the other hand, is invalidating of how much pain the problem is causing your loved one. Trying to reassure him that he can solve the problem is invalidating of the shame or guilt he feels at not having been able to do so thus far.Read more at location 1873

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A general rule is to make at least two validating statements (“I understand”; “This is really important to you”) before trying to solve the problem.Read more at location 1956

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whenever a person with BPD answers the question “How can I help?” with something like “You can’t help; there’s nothing anyone can do,” you should go back to validation. Say, “I know it feels that way right now. I don’t know if I can help. I am sure willing to try.”Read more at location 2005

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Finally, people with BPD are often overly perfectionistic.Read more at location 2114

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She has to talk about whatever it is over and over while making eye contact to get the shame to go down.Read more at location 2246

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Don’t reinforce shame. Don’t communicate that she should feel shame (don’t say, “Wow, that really was a stupid response”).Read more at location 2272

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shame is often what is driving your loved one to act helpless.Read more at location 2395

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often what you will see is your loved one alternating between extreme emotional arousal (crying, etc.) and extreme emotional avoidance (no expression at all).Read more at location 3124

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impulsive behavior is often one sign that a person is attempting to shut down emotions. Another way to recognize inhibited grieving is through lack of facial expression or body language that you would expect with that emotion.Read more at location 3146

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When people go out and get drunk so that they don’t have to go home and be alone with an emotion, they are intentionally avoiding or inhibiting emotion.Read more at location 3180

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Validate the emotions that she must be experiencing and validate how hard it is to experience them.Read more at location 3229

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If she starts to shut down, ask her what she is feeling in her body.Read more at location 3243

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There is no evidence that regurgitating all of the sadnesses of anyone’s past ever made the person feel better. In fact, doing this can make people with BPD worse and can lead to an increase in suicidal behaviors.Read more at location 3256

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To access wise mind yourself, breathe in, ask, “Have I done something that is against my values,” and listen. Do this until you have the answer.Read more at location 3354

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We’ve talked about the phenomenon that psychologists call an extinction burst before—that when you change a behavior meant to reverse or reduce an emotion you don’t want to feel, the emotion is going to increase before it decreases.Read more at location 3363

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Her parents would keep paying for her beautiful living situation. Liz would become increasingly depressed and, finally, there would be another suicide attempt and hospitalization.Read more at location 3408

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Her parents gave her an allowance each month that would support a less luxurious apartment and basic necessities. To have more comforts, Liz had to work.Read more at location 3418

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as the fields of psychology and neurobiology have found out more about self-harm behaviors and their effects on physiology, we have learned that the primary reason for selfharm is emotional regulation.Read more at location 3646

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not caring if they were killed in a traffic accident.Read more at location 3782

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People who have relationships that are reinforcing and activities that are meaningful do not usually kill themselves.Read more at location 3790

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Most suicide attempts occur in the evenings, on the weekends, or over holidays, when therapists are not scheduled to work.Read more at location 3807

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The highest-risk time for someone who is suicidal is immediately after being released from an inpatient unit,Read more at location 3835

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DBT works on the premise that people who have lives that include meaningful relationships, activities, and purpose do not attempt suicide. In other words, to be less suicidal, people have to have a life worth living. I have never met someone who said, “I have people I love and who love me, a job I enjoy, and hobbies that keep me engaged, and I want to die.” People become suicidal or engage in problem behaviors because they do not believe they have love or meaning and often because they are consumed by overwhelming despair about what has happened in their lives and hopelessness about what will happen in the future.Read more at location 3962

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I’ve come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated.Read more at location 680

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This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.Read more at location 775

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One of the goals of innovation accounting, which is discussed in depth in Chapter 7, is to help differentiate these false startups from true innovators. Traditional accounting judges new ventures by the same standards it uses for established companies, but these indications are not reliable predictors of a startup’s future prospects. Consider companies such as Amazon.com that racked up huge losses on their way to breakthrough success.Read more at location 1132

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a new breed of designers is developing brand-new techniques under the banner of Lean User Experience (Lean UX). They recognize that the customer archetype is a hypothesis, not a fact. The customer profile should be considered provisional until the strategy has shown via validated learning that we can serve this type of customer in a sustainable way.Read more at location 1199

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The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.Read more at location 1491

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I’ve talked myself out of hope and into a panic, and I am not in touch with any of my own resourcefulness. I am a hideous example of my own theory.Read more at location 485

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This is the main lesson of the last century of public health measures: Cure is uncertain, but prevention is massively effective—witness how getting midwives to wash their hands ended childbed fever, and how immunizations ended polio.Read more at location 534

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I have to confess that even though I have written a book and many articles about children, I’m actually not very good with them. I am goal-oriented and time-urgent and when I’m weeding in the garden, I’m weeding.Read more at location 556

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A decade ago he asked my advice about what to do, and I suggested that he move to Europe, where bubbliness and extroverted warmth are not so highly prized. He is today happily married to a European. And this is the moral of the story: that a person can be happy even if he or she does not have much in the way of positive emotion.Read more at location 661

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happy people endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened,Read more at location 772

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In less than three months, major events (such as being fired or promoted) lose their impact on happiness levels.Read more at location 891

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Recent changes in an individual’s pay predict job satisfaction, but average levels of pay do not.Read more at location 894

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Family caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients show deteriorating subjective well-being over time,Read more at location 899

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The overall lesson is that most Americans, regardless of objective circumstances, say they are happy, and at the same time they markedly underestimate the happiness of other Americans.Read more at location 916

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Once the gross national product exceeds $8,000 per person, however, the correlation disappears, and added wealth brings no further life satisfaction. So the wealthy Swiss are happier than poor Bulgarians, but it hardly matters if one is Irish, Italian, Norwegian, or American.Read more at location 936

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In very poor nations, where poverty threatens life itself, being rich does predict greater well-being. In wealthier nations, however, where almost everyone has a basic safety net, increases in wealth have negligible effects on personal happiness. In the United States, the very poor are lower in happiness, but once a person is just barely comfortable, added money adds little or no happiness. Even the fabulously rich—the Forbes 100, with an average net worth of over 125 million dollars—are only slightly happier than the average American.Read more at location 950

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How important money is to you, more than money itself, influences your happiness. Materialism seems to be counterproductive: at all levels of real income, people who value money more than other goals are less satisfied with their income and with their lives as a whole, although precisely why is a mystery.Read more at location 977

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Life satisfaction goes up slightly with age, pleasant affect declines slightly, and negative affect does not change.Read more at location 1028

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Both “feeling on top of the world” and being “in the depths of despair” become less common with age and experience.Read more at location 1029

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In spite of worse economic numbers, African-Americans and Hispanics have markedly lower rates of depression than Caucasians,Read more at location 1046

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______InRead more at location 1109

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______IfRead more at location 1112

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abused women and elderly caregivers (both surprisingly) score about 21 on average.Read more at location 1118

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all emotions about the past are completely driven by thinking and interpretation:Read more at location 1146

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I think that the events of childhood are overrated; in fact, I think past history in general is overrated. It has turned out to be difficult to find even small effects of childhood events on adult personality, and there is no evidence at all of large—to say nothing of determining—effects.Read more at location 1173

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Gratitude amplifies the savoring and appreciation of the good events gone by, and rewriting history by forgiveness loosens the power of the bad events to embitter (and actually can transform bad memories into good ones).Read more at location 1235

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We do not have a vehicle in our culture for telling the people who mean the most to us how thankful we are that they are on the planet—and even when we are moved to do so, we shrink in embarrassment.Read more at location 1294

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Optimistic people explain good events to themselves in terms of permanent causes such as traits and abilities. Pessimists name transient causes, such as moods and effort.Read more at location 1539

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Finding permanent and universal causes of good events along with temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope;Read more at location 1586

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People who make permanent and universal explanations for good events, as well as temporary and specific explanations for bad events, bounce back from troubles briskly and get on a roll easily when they succeed once.Read more at location 1596

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The key to disputing your own pessimistic thoughts is to first recognize them and then to treat them as if they were uttered by an external person, a rival whose mission in life was to make you miserable.Read more at location 1605

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During the next five adverse events you face in your daily life, listen closely for your beliefs, observe the consequences, and dispute your beliefs vigorously.Read more at location 1675

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Inject into your life as many events that produce pleasure as you can, but spread them out, letting more time elapse between them than you normally do. If you find that your desire to engage in a particular pleasure diminishes to zero (or below, to aversion) when you space it far enough apart, you are probably dealing with an addiction and not a pleasure.Read more at location 1805

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In the nightly choice between reading a good book and watching a sitcom on television, we often choose the latter—although surveys show again and again that the average mood while watching sitcoms on television is mild depression.Read more at location 1998

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carefully done diagnostic studies demonstrate that in the United States, black and Hispanic people actually have less depression than white people, even though their average objective life conditions are worse).Read more at location 2009

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What would happen if my entire life were made up of such easy pleasures, never calling on my strengths, never presenting challenges? Such a life sets one up for depression.Read more at location 2015

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Herein is my formulation of the good life: Using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of your life to bring abundant gratification and authentic happiness.Read more at location 2649

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The mood state Americans are in, on average, when watching television is mildly depressed.Read more at location 2858

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When adjusted for sociodemo-graphics, lawyers topped the list, suffering from depression at a rate 3.6 times higher than employed persons generally. Lawyers also suffer from alcoholism and illegal drug use at rates far higher than nonlawyers.Read more at location 2879

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An important study of the relationship of job conditions with depression and coronary disease measures both job demands and decision latitude. There is one combination particularly inimical to health and morale: high job demands coupled with low decision latitude. Individuals with these jobs have much more coronary disease and depression than individuals in the other three quadrants.Read more at location 2917

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Lawyers are trained to be aggressive, judgmental, intellectual, analytical and emotionally detached. This produces predictable emotional consequences for the legal practitioner: he or she will be depressed, anxious, and angry a lot of the time.Read more at location 2941

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The key move is credible disputation: treating the catastrophic thoughts (“I’ll never make partner,” “My husband is probably unfaithful”) as if they were uttered by an external person whose mission is to make your life miserable, and then marshaling evidence against the thoughts.Read more at location 2948

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Mere possession itself markedly increases the value of an object to you, and increases your commitment to it. This finding tells us that homo sapiens is not homo economicus, a creature obedient to the “laws” of economics and motivated solely by rational exchange.Read more at location 3010

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In the Diener and Seligman study of extremely happy people, every person (save one) in the top 10 percent of happiness was currently involved in a romantic relationship. Perhaps the single most robust fact about marriage across many surveys is that married people are happier than anyone else.Read more at location 3034

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anxious adults remember their fathers as unfair.Read more at location 3143

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Anxious people cling; they fear rejection continually, and they discourage autonomy and independence in the people they love.Read more at location 3150

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Even if only one of the partners is secure in style, the other partner (avoidant or anxious) is also more satisfied with the marriage than he or she would have been with a less secure partner.Read more at location 3174

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Remarkably, the bigger the illusion, the happier and more stable the relationship. Satisfied couples see virtues in their partners that are not seen at all by their closest friends.Read more at location 3260

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The upshot of this is straightforward: Optimism helps marriage. When your partner does something that displeases you, try hard to find a credible temporary and local explanation for it:Read more at location 3295

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When your partner does something admirable, amplify it with plausible explanations that are permanent (always) and pervasive (character traits):Read more at location 3298

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You should go far out of your way to validate what your spouse is saying; the more serious the issue, the clearer your validation must be.Read more at location 3312

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Preparing your rebuttal while listening is an insidious habit and one that is not easy to overcome. One aid is to begin whatever your response is with a paraphrase of what the speaker said, since a good paraphrase requires quite a lot of attention.Read more at location 3319

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all of our children see stuff they want and start demanding it. We reply, “Darryl, your birthday is in two months. When we get home, let’s add this video game to your wish list.” That seems to work, and it also begins the conversion of impulsive demand into future-mindedness, a strength to which I will return in the second half of this chapter.Read more at location 3575

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Having chores as a child is one of the only early predictors of positive mental health later in life.Read more at location 3675

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_____8.Read more at location 4018

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wonder how tightly the belief in a world moving in this utopian direction is tied to being wealthy and privileged. I wonder if Positive Psychology will only appeal to people near the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs.Read more at location 4158

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The good life: using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in the main realms of your life.Read more at location 4281

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A U.S. study, for example, found that women who are unhappily married and do not express their emotions have a greatly increased risk of death compared with similarly unhappy women who do not repress their feelings. Canadian research has shown that people abused in childhood have a nearly 50 percent increased risk of cancer in adulthood.Read more at location 64

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As an astute observer has pointed out, attempting to find the cause of cancer on the cellular level is like trying to understand a traffic jam by examining the internal combustion engine.Read more at location 71

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“Most people do not fully realize to what extent the spirit of scientific research and the lessons learned from it depend upon the personal viewpoints of the discoverers,”Read more at location 134

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The more specialized doctors become, the more they know about a body part or organ and the less they tend to understand the human being in whom that part or organ resides.Read more at location 138

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Only an intellectual Luddite would deny the enormous benefits that have accrued to humankind from the scrupulous application of scientific methods.Read more at location 148

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“Medicine tells us as much about the meaningful performance of healing, suffering and dying as chemical analysis tells us about the aesthetic value of pottery,”Read more at location 150

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Our immune system does not exist in isolation from daily experience. For example, the immune defences that normally function in healthy young people have been shown to be suppressed in medical students under the pressure of final examinations. Of even greater implication for their future health and well-being, the loneliest students suffered the greatest negative impact on their immune systems. Loneliness has been similarly associated with diminished immune activity in a group of psychiatric inpatients. Even if no further research evidence existed—though there is plenty—one would have to consider the long-term effects of chronic stress. The pressure of examinations is obvious and short term, but many people unwittingly spend their entire lives as if under the gaze of a powerful and judgmental examiner whom they must please at all costs. Many of us live, if not alone, then in emotionally inadequate relationships that do not recognize or honour our deepest needs. Isolation and stress affect many who may believe their lives are quite satisfactory.Read more at location 186

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We want to be the authoritative person in our own lives: in charge, able to make the authentic decisions that affect us. There is no true responsibility without awareness.Read more at location 226

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And here we confront the inadequacy of language. Even to speak about links between mind and body is to imply that two discrete entities are somehow connected to each other. Yet in life there is no such separation; there is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body. The word mindbody has been suggested to convey the real state of things.Read more at location 235

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I have wondered at times how Mary’s life might have turned out if someone had been there to hear, see and understand her when she was a small child—abused, frightened, feeling responsible for her little sisters. Perhaps had someone been there consistently and dependably, she could have learned to value herself, to express her feelings, to assert her anger when people invaded her boundaries physically or emotionally. Had that been her fate, would she still be alive?Read more at location 288

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Researchers in Colorado looked at one hundred people with the type of MS called relapsing-remitting, in which flare-ups alternate with symptom-free periods. This is the type Natalie has. Patients burdened by qualitatively extreme stresses, such as major relationship difficulties or financial insecurity, were almost four times as likely to suffer exacerbations.Read more at location 314

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I still have not learned that I have to pace myself. My body says no to me frequently, and I keep going. I don’t learn.”Read more at location 330

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A study done in 1969 looked at the role of psychological processes in thirty-two patients from Israel and the United States. Eighty-five per cent of these MS patients experienced the emergence of symptoms that were subsequently diagnosed as multiple sclerosis in the wake of recent highly stressful events. The nature of the stressor varied considerably, from the death or illness of loved ones to a sudden threat of loss of livelihood or perhaps to a family event that caused permanent change in a person’s life and demanded a flexibility or adaptation beyond his ability to manage. Protracted marital conflict was one such source of stress, increased responsibility at work another. “The common characteristic . . .” write the authors of the study, “is the gradual realization of the inability to cope with a difficult situation . . . provoking feelings of inadequacy or failure.”5 These stresses held across different cultures.Read more at location 352

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Another study compared MS patients with a group of healthy “controls.” Severely threatening events were ten times more common, and marital conflict five times more frequent, in the MS group.Read more at location 359

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the abundant medical literature linking autoimmune processes themselves to stress and personality,Read more at location 417

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And “don’t tell Mum”? The resignation of someone already aware of the futility of trying to convey her pain, fear and anxiety—her shadow side—to a parent unable to receive such communication.Read more at location 493

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For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.Read more at location 554

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excessive stress occurs when the demands made on an organism exceed that organism’s reasonable capacities to fulfill them.Read more at location 575

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The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control.Read more at location 668

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Dental students had a wound deliberately inflicted on their hard palates while they were facing immunology exams and again during vacation. In all of them the wound healed more quickly in the summer. Under stress, their white blood cells produced less of a substance essential to healing.Read more at location 701

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The body’s physiological stress mechanisms are often triggered inappropriately, leading to disease.Read more at location 707

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The higher the level of economic development, it seems, the more anaesthetized we have become to our emotional realities.Read more at location 713

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Self-regulation, writes Ross Buck, “involves in part the attainment of emotional competence, which is defined as the ability to deal in an appropriate and satisfactory way with one’s own feelings and desires.”12 Emotional competence presupposes capacities often lacking in our society, where “cool”—the absence of emotion—is the prevailing ethic, where “don’t be so emotional” and “don’t be so sensitive” are what children often hear, and where rationality is generally considered to be the preferred antithesis of emotionality. The idealized cultural symbol of rationality is Mr. Spock, the emotionally crippled Vulcan character on Star Trek.Read more at location 738

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Emotional competence requires • the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; • the ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries; • the facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the present situation and those that represent residue from the past. What we want and demand from the world needs to conform to our present needs, not to unconscious, unsatisfied needs from childhood. If distinctions between past and present blur, we will perceive loss or the threat of loss where none exists; and • the awareness of those genuine needs that do require satisfaction, rather than their repression for the sake of gaining the acceptance or approval of others. Stress occurs in the absence of these criteria, and it leads to the disruption of homeostasis. Chronic disruption results in ill health.Read more at location 744

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people with ALS seemed to have two lifelong patterns distinguishing them: rigidly competent behaviour—that is, the inability to ask for or receive help, and the chronic exclusion of so-called negative feelings.Read more at location 810

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Characterizing the personalities of ALS patients are relentless self-drive, reluctance to acknowledge the need for help and the denial of pain whether physical or emotional.Read more at location 837

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In one study, psychologists interviewed patients admitted to hospital for breast biopsy, without knowing the pathology results. Researchers were able to predict the presence of cancer in up to 94 per cent of cases judging by such psychological factors alone.Read more at location 1184

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I’m not worried my kids will be angry with me, I’m worried they won’t be angry enough.Read more at location 1497

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[They] were more likely . . . to endorse attitudes that are prevalent among persons vulnerable to depression, such as perfectionistic standards and concern about the judgment of others.Read more at location 1756

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Without any knowledge of the results of the Pap smear, the researchers “were able to predict with almost 75 per cent accuracy those individuals who had early cancer, simply by utilizing a questionnaire which differentiated between various emotional states. They found that cancer was most apt to occur in those women with a ‘helplessness-prone personality,’ or some sense of helpless frustration which could not be resolved in the preceding six months.”Read more at location 1843

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In places where screening is widely practiced, the incidence of diagnosed prostate cancer goes up, and the number of men being treated increases, but the death rate from prostatic malignancy remains unchanged.Read more at location 1916

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Seventy-seven per cent of the MS group, but only 35 per cent of the control group, experienced marked life adversity in the year prior to the appearance of disease. “The excess in marked life stress was most evident in the 6 months before onset. . . . 24 of 39 multiple sclerosis patients (62 per cent) reported a severely threatening event, as compared with six of 40 controls (15 per cent). . . . Significantly more patients than controls experienced marital difficulties (49 per cent vs. 10 per cent). . . . Eighteen of 23 first cases and 12 of 16 relapsing cases reported marked adversity.”Read more at location 4952

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Those who retain the benefits of therapy through the first year tend to continue them long-term.Read more at location 292

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Furthermore, we found that prevention workshops, in which couples worked on their relationship before conflict began to take its toll, were even three times more effective than our workshops designed for couples who were already troubled.Read more at location 297

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The point is that neuroses don’t have to ruin a marriage. If you can accommodate each other’s “crazy” side and handle it with caring, affection, and respect, your marriage can thrive.Read more at location 406

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What do you do about mental health issues that are extremely challenging but that some relationships could possibly accommodate? This category includes addiction, clinical depression, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and severe personality or mood disorders. If any of this sounds familiar, don’t rely on this book alone to make decisions about your future. Seek the additional advice and support of a knowledgeable and experienced mental health professional.Read more at location 409

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At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways but through small gestures day in and day out.Read more at location 474

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Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.Read more at location 488

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Here’s a simple example. Olivia and Nathaniel are getting ready to host a dinner party. Nathaniel calls, “Where are the napkins?” and Olivia yells back edgily, “They’re in the cupboard!” Because their marriage is founded on a firm friendship, he shrugs off her tone of voice and focuses instead on the information Olivia has given him—that the napkins are in the cupboard. He attributes her anger to some fleeting problem that has nothing to do with him—like she’s feeling time-pressured and can’t get the cork out of the wine bottle. However, if their marriage were troubled, he would be more likely to sulk or yell back, “Never mind, you get them!”Read more at location 494

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Betrayal is, fundamentally, any act or life choice that doesn’t prioritize the commitment and put the partner “before all others.”Read more at location 552

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In fact, the Love Lab research indicates that betrayal lies at the heart of every failed relationship.Read more at location 556

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Then all of a sudden, Olivia puts her hands on her hips and, in perfect imitation of their four-year-old son, sticks out her tongue. Since Nathaniel knows that she’s about to do this, he sticks out his tongue first. Then they both start laughing. As always, this silly contest defuses the tension between them.Read more at location 569

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a repair attempt. This term refers to any statement or action—silly or otherwise—that prevents negativity from escalating out of control. Repair attempts are a secret weapon of emotionally intelligent couples—even though many of these couples aren’t aware that they are employing something so powerful. When a couple have a strong friendship, they naturally become experts at sending each other repair attempts and at correctly reading those sent their way.Read more at location 572

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The research shows that if your discussion begins with a harsh start-up, it will inevitably end on a negative note, even if there are a lot of attempts to “make nice” in between. Statistics tell the story: 96 percent of the time you can predict the outcome of a conversation based on the first three minutes of the fifteen-minute interaction! A harsh start-up simply dooms you to failure. So if you begin a discussion that way, you might as well pull the plug, take a breather, and start over.Read more at location 633

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Will they read or listen to the news together or silently alone? Will they chat while they eat lunch? I watch filled with suspense because I know: couples who engage in lots of such interaction tend to remain happy.Read more at location 1768

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Comical as it may sound, romance is strengthened in the supermarket aisle when your partner asks, “Are we out of butter?” and you answer, “I don’t know. Let me go get some just in case,” instead of shrugging apathetically.Read more at location 1779

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Remind yourself that being helpful to each other will do far more for the strength and passion of your marriage than a two-week Bahamas getaway.Read more at location 1793

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(Like many people, whenever possible, I try to do chores in a very self-indulgent, enjoyable way.)Read more at location 1805

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So before you reply defensively to your partner, pause for a moment and search for a bid underneath your partner’s harsh words. Then, focus on the bid, not the delivery. If you find it difficult not to react defensively, first take five really deep breaths, counting slowly from one to six as you inhale and then slowly from seven to fifteen as you exhale. Then say to your partner, “I want to respond to you positively, so can you please tell me what you need right now from me? I really want to know.”Read more at location 1873

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Only the parents who continued to focus and play patiently with their newborn had the pleasure of witnessing their child’s amazing imitation, which was really a form of communication.Read more at location 1896

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For starters, think about the timing of the chat. Some people want to unburden themselves when they’re barely through the door. But others need to decompress on their own for a while before they’re ready to interact. Be aware of the ideal timing for each of you so that you are both in the mood to talk.Read more at location 1991

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Don’t give unsolicited advice. When someone you love expresses pain, it is natural to want to fix the problem or make the person feel better. But oftentimes your spouse isn’t asking you to come up with a solution at all—just to be a good listener or offer a ready shoulder to cry on. So unless your partner has specifically asked for help, don’t try to fix the problem, change how your partner feels, or rescue him or her. Instead, your motto should be “Don’t do something, just be there!”Read more at location 2012

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Although this has changed somewhat over the years, I still find that in heterosexual couples it tends to be the husband who gets caught up in trying to solve his partner’s problems. These men are often relieved when I tell them that it is not their responsibility to rescue their partner. In fact, such attempts to “save” her tend to backfire. When a wife shares her troubles, she usually reacts very negatively if her husband tries to give her advice right away. Instead, she wants to hear that he understands and feels compassion.Read more at location 2023

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You have to let your partner know that you fully understand and empathize with the dilemma. Only then will he or she be receptive to suggestions.Read more at location 2029

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Express a “we against others” attitude. If your mate is feeling all alone in facing some difficulty, express solidarity. Let him or her know that the two of you are in this together.Read more at location 2058

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Sometimes people speak in metaphors, sort of like poetry. If you pick up on this when your partner is upset, and reflect it back as part of your response, you convey that you are fully aware of what he or she is experiencing.Read more at location 2171

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Don’t try to cheer up your partner. When someone is sad, it’s a common response to attempt to make them smile, laugh, or otherwise erase their blues. But unless your partner asks for assistance in shaking the mood, it’s usually more helpful to listen to sadness rather than trying to relieve it. Imagine that you’re a traveler visiting the landscape of sadness. Your partner is the tour guide. This sort of “being there” when your partner is blue will bring you closer than the standard, “Don’t cry!”Read more at location 2186

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In our long-term study of 130 newlywed couples, whom we followed for nine years, we found that, even in the first few months of marriage, men who allowed their wives to influence them had happier relationships and were less likely to eventually divorce than men who resisted their wives’ influence. Statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power with his partner there is an 81 percent chance that his marriage will self-destruct.Read more at location 2306

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the plain truth is that “girlish” games offer far better preparation for marriage and family life because they focus on relationships.Read more at location 2408

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In landmark research, Eleanor Maccoby at Stanford University found that while about 35 percent of preschool best friendships are between boys and girls, like Naomi and Eric, by age seven that percentage plummets to virtually zero.Read more at location 2416

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Research shows that a husband who can accept influence from his wife also tends to be an outstanding father.Read more at location 2444

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Although it is stressful to listen to your partner’s negative feelings, remember that successful relationships live by the motto “When you are in pain, the world stops and I listen.”Read more at location 3065

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Taking responsibility is a critical component of a softened start-up no matter whom you’re addressing. But I have found that it is especially important for wives to incorporate this into their delivery. For many men, hearing their wife acknowledge a shared responsibility is like manna from heaven and prevents tensions from escalating.Read more at location 3186

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In general, when one partner is a habitual porn user, the couple will have sex less often. This is not so when masturbation is used without porn; in that case, couples are likely to have sex more often.Read more at location 3926

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Without explicit agreement, the use of porn is really a form of relationship betrayal.Read more at location 3940

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The only way out of this dilemma is for the husband to side with his wife against his mother. Although this may sound harsh, remember that one of the basic tasks of a marriage is to establish a sense of “we-ness” between husband and wife. So the husband must let his mother know that his wife does indeed come first. He is a husband, then a son. This is not a pleasant position to take. His mother’s feelings may be hurt. But eventually she will probably adjust to the reality that her son’s family unit, where he is the husband, takes precedence to him over all others. It is absolutely critical for the marriage that the husband be firm about this, even if he feels unfairly put upon and even if his mother cannot accept the new reality.Read more at location 3981

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So maybe this little fact will spark a husband’s enthusiasm for domestic chores: women find a man’s willingness to do housework extremely erotic. When the husband does his share to maintain the home, both he and his wife report a more satisfying sex life than in marriages where the wife believes her husband is not doing his share.Read more at location 4179

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Try to have the same attitude a professional cook has about preparing food. A chef isn’t insulted if a customer isn’t in the mood for polenta tonight or has an aversion to olives. Instead he or she makes accommodations that will satisfy the customer’s palate.Read more at location 4521

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Counterintuitive as it sounds, the results suggest that husbands who reward their wives for saying no will end up having a lot more sex!Read more at location 4620

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Couples who are demanding of their marriage are more likely to have deeply satisfying unions than those who lower their expectations.Read more at location 4758

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Acknowledging and respecting each other’s deepest, most personal hopes and dreams is key to saving and enriching your marriage.Read more at location 4912

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Gus’s main goal in life is to feel secure. He moves slowly and carefully toward decisions and is very frugal.Read more at location 4935

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people with the greatest expectations for their marriage usually wind up with the highest-quality marriages.Read more at location 5434

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If you recognize yourself in the description of the self-critic, the best thing you can do for yourself and your marriage is to work on accepting yourself with all of your flaws.Read more at location 5503

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It was thus a larger, political cause that stimulated such passionate interest in hysteria and gave impetus to the investigations of Charcot and his followers in the late nineteenth century. The solution of the mystery of hysteria was intended to demonstrate the triumph of secular enlightenment over reactionary superstition, as well as the moral superiority of a secular world view.Read more at location 383

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While these men of science saw themselves as benevolent rescuers, uplifting women from their degraded condition, they never for a moment envisioned a condition of social equality between women and men. Women were to be the objects of study and humane care, not subjects in their own right. The same men who advocated an enlightened view of hysteria often strongly opposed the admission of women into higher education or the professions and adamantly opposed female suffrage.Read more at location 391

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Advocates of women’s rights, recognizing that their fortunes depended upon survival of the fragile new democracy, tended to subordinate their interests in order to preserve consensus within the republican coalition.Read more at location 398

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Initially, the symptoms of mental breakdown were attributed to a physical cause. The British psychologist Charles Myers, who examined some of the first cases, attributed their symptoms to the concussive effects of exploding shells and called the resulting nervous disorder “shell shock.”44 The name stuck, even though it soon became clear that the syndrome could be found in soldiers who had not been exposed to any physical trauma. Gradually military psychiatrists were forced to acknowledge that the symptoms of shell shock were due to psychological trauma. The emotional stress of prolonged exposure to violent death was sufficient to produce a neurotic syndrome resembling hysteria in men.Read more at location 479

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The goal of treatment, as in all military medicine, was to return the patient to combat.Read more at location 516

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Rivers, by pursuing a course of humane treatment, had established two principles that would be embraced by American military psychiatrists in the next war. He had demonstrated, first, that men of unquestioned bravery could succumb to overwhelming fear and, second, that the most effective motivation to overcome that fear was something stronger than patriotism, abstract principles, or hatred of the enemy. It was the love of soldiers for one another.Read more at location 524

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It was recognized for the first time that any man could break down under fire and that psychiatric casualties could be predicted in direct proportion to the severity of combat exposure.Read more at location 573

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Each moment of combat imposes a strain so great that men will break down in direct relation to the intensity and duration of their exposure. Thus psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare.”Read more at location 577

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Kardiner and Spiegel argued that the strongest protection against overwhelming terror was the degree of relatedness between the soldier, his immediate fighting unit, and their leader.Read more at location 582

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They observed that the strongest protection against psychological breakdown was the morale and leadership of the small fighting unit.Read more at location 585

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The moral legitimacy of the antiwar movement and the national experience of defeat in a discredited war had made it possible to recognize psychological trauma as a lasting and inevitable legacy of war. In 1980, for the first time, the characteristic syndrome of psychological trauma became a “real” diagnosis. In that year the American Psychiatric Association included in its official manual of mental disorders a new category, called “post-traumatic stress disorder.”66 The clinical features of this disorder were congruent with the traumatic neurosis that Kardiner had outlined forty years before. Thus the syndrome of psychological trauma, periodically forgotten and periodically rediscovered through the past century, finally attained formal recognition within the diagnostic canon.Read more at location 638

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The late nineteenth-century studies of hysteria foundered on the question of sexual trauma. At the time of these investigations there was no awareness that violence is a routine part of women’s sexual and domestic lives. Freud glimpsed this truth and retreated in horror. For most of the twentieth century, it was the study of combat veterans that led to the development of a body of knowledge about traumatic disorders. Not until the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s was it recognized that the most common post-traumatic disorders are those not of men in war but of women in civilian life.Read more at location 645

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Women did not have a name for the tyranny of private life. It was difficult to recognize that a well-established democracy in the public sphere could coexist with conditions of primitive autocracy or advanced dictatorship in the home.Read more at location 653

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In the protected environment of consciousness-raising groups, women spoke of rape and other women believed them.Read more at location 662

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A feminist understanding of sexual assault empowered victims to breach the barriers of privacy, to support one another, and to take collective action.Read more at location 687

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‘study nature, not books,’ and put all theories to the test of living practice and action.”Read more at location 691

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The most sophisticated epidemiological survey was conducted in the early 1980s by Diana Russell, a sociologist and human rights activist. Over 900 women, chosen by random sampling techniques, were interviewed in depth about their experiences of domestic violence and sexual exploitation. The results were horrifying. One woman in four had been raped. One woman in three had been sexually abused in childhood.Read more at location 705

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In addition to documenting pervasive sexual violence, the feminist movement offered a new language for understanding the impact of sexual assault. Entering the public discussion of rape for the first time, women found it necessary to establish the obvious: that rape is an atrocity. Feminists redefined rape as a crime of violence rather than a sexual act.72 This simplistic formulation was advanced to counter the view that rape fulfilled women’s deepest desires, a view then prevailing in every form of literature, from popular pornography to academic texts.Read more at location 708

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They noted that women experienced rape as a life-threatening event, having generally feared mutilation and death during the assault. They remarked that in the aftermath of rape, victims complained of insomnia, nausea, startle responses, and nightmares, as well as dissociative or numbing symptoms. And they commented that some of the victims’ symptoms resembled those previously described in combat veterans.Read more at location 728

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Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.Read more at location 767

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Rape, battery, and other forms of sexual and domestic violence are so common a part of women’s lives that they can hardly be described as outside the range of ordinary experience. And in view of the number of people killed in war over the past century, military trauma, too, must be considered a common part of human experience; only the fortunate find it unusual.Read more at location 771

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Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life.Read more at location 774

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Nevertheless, certain identifiable experiences increase the likelihood of harm. These include being taken by surprise, trapped, or exposed to the point of exhaustion.3 The likelihood of harm is also increased when the traumatic events include physical violation or injury, exposure to extreme violence, or witnessing grotesque death.4 In each instance, the salient characteristic of the traumatic event is its power to inspire helplessness and terror.Read more at location 780

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Traumatic reactions occur when action is of no avail. When neither resistance nor escape is possible, the human system of self-defense becomes overwhelmed and disorganized. Each component of the ordinary response to danger, having lost its utility, tends to persist in an altered and exaggerated state long after the actual danger is over.Read more at location 790

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Traumatized people feel and act as though their nervous systems have been disconnected from the present.Read more at location 808

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People with posttraumatic stress disorder take longer to fall asleep, are more sensitive to noise, and awaken more frequently during the night than ordinary people. Thus traumatic events appear to recondition the human nervous system.Read more at location 842

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Long after the danger is past, traumatized people relive the event as though it were continually recurring in the present.Read more at location 846

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Post-traumatic play is so literal that if you spot it, you may be able to guess the trauma with few other clues.”27Read more at location 906

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seeing a lot of medical emergencies, a lot of diabetic emergencies, a lot of elderly people. Once in awhile there would be an auto accident, which would be the juice. I would turn on the sirens and know I’m going to something, and the adrenalin rush that would run through my body would fuel me for the next 100 calls.Read more at location 936

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Both hypnosis and opiates diminish the distress of intractable pain without abolishing the sensation itself.Read more at location 1009

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In another study of 100 combat veterans with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, Herbert Hendin and Ann Haas noted that 85 percent developed serious drug and alcohol problems after their return to civilian life. Only 7 percent had used alcohol heavily before they went to war.Read more at location 1021

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Their drug abuse, however, ultimately compounded their difficulties and further alienated them from others.Read more at location 1023

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Although dissociative alterations in consciousness, or even intoxication, may be adaptive at the moment of total helplessness, they become maladaptive once the danger is past. Because these altered states keep the traumatic experience walled off from ordinary consciousness, they prevent the integration necessary for healing.Read more at location 1027

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In avoiding any situations reminiscent of the past trauma, or any initiative that might involve future planning and risk, traumatized people deprive themselves of those new opportunities for successful coping that might mitigate the effect of the traumatic experience. Thus, constrictive symptoms, though they may represent an attempt to defend against overwhelming emotional states, exact a high price for whatever protection they afford. They narrow and deplete the quality of life and ultimately perpetuate the effects of the traumatic event.Read more at location 1074

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Rape survivors reported more “nervous breakdowns,” more suicidal thoughts, and more suicide attempts than any other group. While prior to the rape they had been no more likely than anyone else to attempt suicide, almost one in five (19.2 percent) made a suicide attempt following the rape.Read more at location 1138

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In rape, for example, the purpose of the attack is precisely to demonstrate contempt for the victim’s autonomy and dignity.Read more at location 1191

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As the normal child develops, her growing competence and capacity for initiative are added to her positive self-image.Read more at location 1205

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In the aftermath of traumatic events, as survivors review and judge their own conduct, feelings of guilt and inferiority are practically universal. Robert Jay Lifton found “survivor guilt” to be a common experience in people who had lived through war, natural disaster, or nuclear holocaust.8 Rape produces essentially the same effect: it is the victims, not the perpetrators, who feel guilty. Guilt may be understood as an attempt to draw some useful lesson from disaster and to regain some sense of power and control. To imagine that one could have done better may be more tolerable than to face the reality of utter helplessness.Read more at location 1208

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In one study of Vietnam veterans, about 20 percent of the men admitted to having witnessed atrocities during their tour of duty in Vietnam, and another 9 percent acknowledged personally committing atrocities. Years after their return from the war, the most symptomatic men were those who had witnessed or participated in abusive violence.14 Confirming these findings, another study of Vietnam veterans found that every one of the men who acknowledged participating in atrocities had post-traumatic stress disorder more than a decade after the end of the war.Read more at location 1226

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The purpose of the rapist is to terrorize, dominate, and humiliate his victim, to render her utterly helpless. Thus rape, by its nature, is intentionally designed to produce psychological trauma.Read more at location 1302

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Men who had been prone to antisocial behavior before going to war were likely to have predominant symptoms of irritability and anger, while men who had high moral expectations of themselves and strong compassion for others were more likely to have predominant symptoms of depression.Read more at location 1308

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Studies of diverse populations have reached similar conclusions: stress-resistant individuals appear to be those with high sociability, a thoughtful and active coping style, and a strong perception of their ability to control their destiny.Read more at location 1313

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The experiences of women who have encountered a rapist suggest that the same resilient characteristics are protective to some degree. The women who remained calm, used many active strategies, and fought to the best of their ability were not only more likely to be successful in thwarting the rape attempt but also less likely to suffer severe distress symptoms even if their efforts ultimately failed. By contrast, the women who were immobilized by terror and submitted without a struggle were more likely not only to be raped but also to be highly self-critical and depressed in the aftermath. Women’s generally high sociability, however, was often a liability rather than an asset during a rape attempt. Many women tried to appeal to the humanity of the rapist or to establish some form of empathic connection with him. These efforts were almost universally futile.Read more at location 1338

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Traumatic life events, like other misfortunes, are especially merciless to those who are already troubled.Read more at location 1364

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The period of greatest psychological vulnerability is also in reality the period of greatest traumatic exposure, for both young men and young women. Rape and combat might thus be considered complementary social rites of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society. They are the paradigmatic forms of trauma for women and men respectively.Read more at location 1376

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Military psychiatrists in the Second World War discovered that separating soldiers from their units greatly compounded the trauma of combat exposure.Read more at location 1393

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In the initial stage it’s just confusion and despair. In that immediate period afterwards, if the environment encourages and supports the person, you can avoid the worst of it.”Read more at location 1398

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the length of time required for recovery was related to the quality of the person’s intimate relationships. Women who had a stable intimate relationship with a partner tended to recover faster than those who did not.51 Similarly, another study found that the rape survivors who were least symptomatic on follow-up were those who reported the greatest experience of intimate, loving relationships with men.Read more at location 1414

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This testimony is borne out in studies.Read more at location 1427

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Men with post-traumatic stress disorder were less likely to marry, more likely to have marital and parenting problems, and more likely to divorce than those who escaped without the disorder.Read more at location 1430

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Thus survivors often hesitate to disclose to family members, not only because they fear they will not be understood but also because they fear that the reactions of family members will overshadow their own.Read more at location 1459

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Because of entrenched norms of male entitlement, many women are accustomed to accommodating their partners’ desires and subordinating their own, even in consensual sex. In the aftermath of rape, however, many survivors find they can no longer tolerate this arrangement. In order to reclaim her own sexuality, a rape survivor needs to establish a sense of autonomy and control. If she is ever to trust again, she needs a cooperative and sensitive partner who does not expect sex on demand.Read more at location 1473

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The survivor needs the assistance of others in her struggle to overcome her shame and to arrive at a fair assessment of her conduct. Here the attitudes of those closest to her are of great importance. Realistic judgments diminish the feelings of humiliation and guilt. By contrast, either harsh criticism or ignorant, blind acceptance greatly compounds the survivor’s self-blame and isolation.Read more at location 1477

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The first task of consciousness-raising is simply calling rape by its true name.Read more at location 1511

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contrast, supportive responses from those closest to the survivor can detoxify her sense of shame, stigma, and defilement. Another, more fortunate rape survivor describes how a friend comforted her: “I said, ‘I’m fourteen years old and I’m not a virgin any more.’ He said, ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with being a virgin. Some day you’ll fall in love and you’ll make love and that will be losing your virginity. Not the act of what happened’ (he didn’t say rape). ‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it.’Read more at location 1520

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The survivor cannot come to a fair assessment of her own conduct until she clearly understands that no action on her part in any way absolves the rapist of responsibility for his crime.Read more at location 1540

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Fear of conflict or social embarrassment may prevent victims from taking action in time.Read more at location 1551

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Sharing the traumatic experience with others is a precondition for the restitution of a sense of a meaningful world.Read more at location 1568

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After every war, soldiers have expressed resentment at the general lack of public awareness, interest, and attention; they fear their sacrifices will be quickly forgotten.Read more at location 1575

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When veterans’ groups organize, their first efforts are to ensure that their ordeals will not disappear from public memory. Hence the insistence on medals, monuments, parades, holidays, and public ceremonies of memorial, as well as individual compensation for injuries. Even congratulatory public ceremonies, however, rarely satisfy the combat veteran’s longing for recognition, because of the sentimental distortion of the truth of combat.Read more at location 1578

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Women quickly learn that rape is a crime only in theory; in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women’s experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men. That level turns out to be high indeed. In the words of the legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon, “rape, from women’s point of view, is not prohibited; it is regulated.”81 Traditional legal standards recognize a crime of rape only if the perpetrator uses extreme force, which far exceeds that usually needed to terrorize a woman, or if he attacks a woman who belongs to a category of restricted social access, the most notorious example of which is an attack on a white woman by a black man. The greater the degree of social relationship, the wider the latitude of permitted coercion, so that an act of forced sex committed by a stranger may be recognized as rape, while the same act committed by an acquaintance is not. Since most rapes are in fact committed by acquaintances or intimates, most rapes are not recognized in law. In marriage, many states grant a permanent and absolute prerogative for sexual access, and any degree of force is legally permitted.Read more at location 1610

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If one set out by design to devise a system for provoking intrusive post-traumatic symptoms, one could not do better than a court of law. Women who have sought justice in the legal system commonly compare this experience to being raped a second time.Read more at location 1625

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Less than one rape in ten is reported to police.Read more at location 1629

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the most common trauma of women remains confined to the sphere of private life, without formal recognition or restitution from the community. There is no public monument for rape survivors.Read more at location 1631

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the women who recover most successfully are those who discover some meaning in their experience that transcends the limits of personal tragedy. Most commonly, women find this meaning by joining with others in social action. In their follow-up study of rape survivors, Burgess and Holmstrom discovered that the women who had made the best recoveries were those who had become active in the antirape movement. They became volunteer counselors at rape crisis centers, victim advocates in court, lobbyists for legislative reform.Read more at location 1634

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Political prisoners who are aware of the methods of coercive control devote particular attention to maintaining their sense of autonomy. One form of resistance is refusing to comply with petty demands or to accept rewards. The hunger strike is the ultimate expression of this resistance. Because the prisoner voluntarily subjects himself to greater deprivation than that willed by his captor, he affirms his sense of integrity and self-control.Read more at location 1745

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Walker observes that the “reconciliation” phase is a crucial step in breaking down the psychological resistance of the battered woman.Read more at location 1760

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long as the victim maintains any other human connection, the perpetrator’s power is limited.Read more at location 1765

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The stance of suicide is active; it preserves an inner sense of control. As in the case of the hunger strike, the captive asserts his defiance by his willingness to end his life.Read more at location 1882

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Studies of prisoners of war, for example, report with astonishment that the men never discussed their experiences with anyone. Often those who married after liberation never told even their wives or children that they had been prisoners.43 Similarly, studies of concentration camp survivors consistently remark on their refusal to speak of the past.44 The more the period of captivity is disavowed, however, the more this disconnected fragment of the past remains fully alive, with the immediate and present characteristics of traumatic memory.Read more at location 1978

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Once we got out, we were suddenly confronted with all these problems. . . . Ridiculous problems—doorknobs, for instance. I had no reflex any longer to reach for the knobs of doors. I hadn’t had to—hadn’t been allowed to—for over thirteen years. I’d come to a closed door and find myself momentarily stymied—I couldn’t remember what to do next. Or how to make a dark room light. How to work, pay bills, shop, visit friends, answer questions. My daughter tells me to do this or that, and one problem I can handle, two I can handle, but when the third request comes I can hear her voice but my head is lost in the clouds.46 This constriction in the capacities for active engagement with the world, which is common even after a single trauma, becomes most pronounced in chronically traumatized people, who are often described as passive or helpless. Some theorists have mistakenly applied the concept of “learned helplessness” to the situation of battered women and other chronically traumatized people.47 Such concepts tend to portray the victim as simply defeated or apathetic, whereas in fact a much livelier and more complex inner struggle is usually taking place. In most cases the victim has not given up. But she has learned that every action will be watched, that most actions will be thwarted, and that she will pay dearly for failure. To the extent that the perpetrator has succeeded in enforcing his demand for total submission, she will perceive any exercise of her own initiative as insubordination. Before undertaking any action, she will scan the environment, expecting retaliation.Read more at location 1998

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In isolated prisoners, however, where there is no opportunity to bond with peers, pair bonding may occur between victim and perpetrator, and this relationship may come to feel like the “basic unit of survival.” This is the “traumatic bonding” that occurs in hostages, who come toRead more at location 2028

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In one group of a hundred battered women, 42 percent had attempted suicide.Read more at location 2100

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Many develop the belief that their abusers have absolute or even supernatural powers, can read their thoughts, and can control their lives entirely.Read more at location 2198

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To preserve her faith in her parents, she must reject the first and most obvious conclusion that something is terribly wrong with them. She will go to any lengths to construct an explanation for her fate that absolves her parents of all blame and responsibility.Read more at location 2227

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Survivors who self-mutilate consistently describe a profound dissociative state preceding the act. Depersonalization, derealization, and anesthesia are accompanied by a feeling of unbearable agitation and a compulsion to attack the body. The initial injuries often produce no pain at all. The mutilation continues until it produces a powerful feeling of calm and relief; physical pain is much preferable to the emotional pain that it replaces. As one survivor explains: “I do it to prove I exist.”33 Contrary to common belief, victims of childhood abuse rarely resort to self-injury to “manipulate” other people, or even to communicate distress. Many survivors report that they developed the compulsion to self-mutilate quite early, often before puberty, and practiced it in secret for many years. They are frequently ashamed and disgusted by their behavior and go to great lengths to hide it. Self-injury is also frequently mistaken for a suicidal gesture. Many survivors of childhood abuse do indeed attempt suicide.34 There is a clear distinction, however, between repetitive self-injury and suicide attempts. Self-injury is intended not to kill but rather to relieve unbearable emotional pain, and many survivors regard it, paradoxically, as a form of self-preservation.Read more at location 2390

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Self-injury is perhaps the most spectacular of the pathological soothing mechanisms, but it is only one among many. Abused children generally discover at some point in their development that they can produce major, though temporary, alterations in their affective state by voluntarily inducing autonomic crises or extreme autonomic arousal. Purging and vomiting, compulsive sexual behavior, compulsive risk taking or exposure to danger, and the use of psychoactive drugs become the vehicles by which abused children attempt to regulate their internal emotional states. Through these devices, abused children attempt to obliterate their chronic dysphoria and to simulate, however briefly, an internal state of well-being and comfort that cannot otherwise be achieved. These self-destructive symptoms are often well established in abused children even before adolescence, and they become much more prominent in the adolescent years.Read more at location 2401

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For all of these reasons, the adult survivor is at great risk of repeated victimization in adult life. The data on this point are compelling, at least with respect to women. The risk of rape, sexual harassment, or battering, though high for all women, is approximately doubled for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.Read more at location 2440

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Survivors of childhood abuse are far more likely to be victimized or to harm themselves than to victimize other people. It is surprising, in fact, that survivors do not more often become perpetrators of abuse. Perhaps because of their deeply inculcated self-loathing, survivors seem most disposed to direct their aggression at themselves. While suicide attempts and self-mutilation are strongly correlated with childhood abuse, the link between childhood abuse and adult antisocial behavior is relatively weak.41 A study of over 900 psychiatric patients found that while suicidality was strongly related to a history of childhood abuse, homicidality was not.Read more at location 2472

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On careful questioning, 50–60 percent of psychiatric inpatients and 40–60 percent of outpatients report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse or both.Read more at location 2726

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In the case of multiple personality disorder the etiological role of severe childhood trauma is at this point firmly established.49 In a study by the psychiatrist Frank Putnam of 100 patients with the disorder, 97 had histories of major childhood trauma, most commonly sexual abuse, physical abuse, or both. Extreme sadism and murderous violence were the rule rather than the exception in these dreadful histories. Almost half the patients had actually witnessed the violent death of someone close to them.Read more at location 2805

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A recent study of women with somatization disorder found that 55 percent had been sexually molested in childhood, usually by relatives.Read more at location 2822

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THE CORE EXPERIENCES of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connections with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic capacities for trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy.Read more at location 2889

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Abram Kardiner defines the role of the therapist as that of an assistant to the patient, whose goal is to “help the patient complete the job that he is trying to do spontaneously” and to reinstate “the element of renewed control.”Read more at location 2905

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the same woman who looks like a helpless and “deteriorated” patient in the traditional medical or mental health clinic may look and act like a “strong survivor” in a shelter environment where her experience is validated and her strengths are recognized and encouraged.Read more at location 2913

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In entering the treatment relationship, the therapist promises to respect the patient’s autonomy by remaining disinterested and neutral. “Disinterested” means that the therapist abstains from using her power over the patient to gratify her personal needs. “Neutral” means that the therapist does not take sides in the patient’s inner conflicts or try to direct the patient’s life decisions. Constantly reminding herself that the patient is in charge of her own life, the therapist refrains from advancing a personal agenda. The disinterested and neutral stance is an ideal to be striven for, never perfectly attained.Read more at location 2929

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Ideally, the therapist’s support system should include a safe, structured, and regular forum for reviewing her clinical work. This might be a supervisory relationship or a peer support group, preferably both. The setting must offer permission to express emotional reactions as well as technical or intellectual concerns related to the treatment of patients with histories of trauma.Read more at location 3292

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detailed information regarding post-traumatic reactions is often invaluable to the patient and her family or friends. If the patient is prepared for the symptoms of hyperarousal, intrusion, and numbing, she will be far less frightened when they occur. If she and those closest to her are prepared for the disruptions in relationship that follow upon traumatic experience, they will be far more able to tolerate them and take them in stride. Furthermore, if the patient is offered advice on adaptive coping strategies and warned against common mistakes, her sense of competence and efficacy will be immediately enhanced.Read more at location 3375

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If the therapist believes the patient is suffering from a traumatic syndrome, she should share this information fully with the patient. Knowledge is power. The traumatized person is often relieved simply to learn the true name of her condition. By ascertaining her diagnosis, she begins the process of mastery. No longer imprisoned in the wordlessness of the trauma, she discovers that there is a language for her experience. She discovers that she is not alone; others have suffered in similar ways. She discovers further that she is not crazy; the traumatic syndromes are normal human responses to extreme circumstances. And she discovers, finally, that she is not doomed to suffer this condition indefinitely; she can expect to recover, as others have recovered.Read more at location 3395

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Often it is necessary for the therapist to reframe accepting help as an act of courage. Acknowledging the reality of one’s condition and taking steps to change it become signs of strength, not weakness; initiative, not passivity.Read more at location 3428

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Trauma robs the victim of a sense of power and control; the guiding principle of recovery is to restore power and control to the survivor. The first task of recovery is to establish the survivor’s safety. This task takes precedence over all others, for no other therapeutic work can possibly succeed if safety has not been adequately secured. No other therapeutic work should even be attempted until a reasonable degree of safety has been achieved. This initial stage may last days to weeks with acutely traumatized people or months to years with survivors of chronic abuse. The work of the first stage of recovery becomes increasingly complicated in proportion to the severity, duration, and early onset of abuse.Read more at location 3433

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The physioneurosis of post-traumatic stress disorder can be modified with physical strategies. These include the use of medication to reduce reactivity and hyperarousal and the use of behavioral techniques, such as relaxation or hard exercise, to manage stress. The confusion of the disorder can be addressed with cognitive and behavioral strategies. These include the recognition and naming of symptoms, the use of daily logs to chart symptoms and adaptive responses, the definition of manageable “homework” tasks, and the development of concrete safety plans.Read more at location 3440

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Establishing safety begins by focusing on control of the body and gradually moves outward toward control of the environment. Issues of bodily integrity include attention to basic health needs, regulation of bodily functions such as sleep, eating, and exercise, management of post-traumatic symptoms, and control of self-destructive behaviors. Environmental issues include the establishment of a safe living situation, financial security, mobility, and a plan for self-protection that encompasses the full range of the patient’s daily life. Because no one can establish a safe environment alone, the task of developing an adequate safety plan always includes a component of social support.Read more at location 3448

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The most important thing in medically examining someone who’s been sexually assaulted is not to re-rape the victim. A cardinal rule of medicine is: Above all do no harm . . . rape victims often experience an intense feeling of helplessness and loss of control. If you just look schematically at what a doctor does to the victim very shortly after the assault with a minimal degree of very passive consent: A stranger makes a very quick intimate contact and inserts an instrument into the vagina with very little control or decision-making on the part of the victim; that is a symbolic setup of a psychological re-rape. So when I do an examination I spend a lot of time preparing the victim; every step along the way I try to give back control to the victim. I might say, “We would like to do this and how we do it is your decision,” and provide a large amount of information, much of which I’m sure is never processed; but it still comes across as concern on our part. I try to make the victim an active participant to the fullest extent possible.Read more at location 3457

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The patient who is filled with self-loathing may not feel deserving of good treatment.Read more at location 3580

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To counter the compelling fantasy of a fast, cathartic cure, the therapist may compare the recovery process to running a marathon. Survivors immediately grasp the complexities of this image. They recognize that recovery, like a marathon, is a test of endurance, requiring long preparation and repetitive practice. The metaphor of a marathon captures the strong behavioral focus on conditioning the body, as well as the psychological dimensions of determination and courage. While the image may lack a strong social dimension, it captures the survivor’s initial feeling of isolation. It also offers an image of the therapist’s role as a trainer and coach. While the therapist’s technical expertise, judgment, and moral support are vital to the enterprise, in the end it is the survivor who determines her recovery through her own actions.Read more at location 3746

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The survivor’s initial account of the event may be repetitious, stereotyped, and emotionless.Read more at location 3770

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If symptoms worsen dramatically during active exploration of the trauma, this should be a signal to slow down and to reconsider the course of the therapy.Read more at location 3790

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The patient should also expect that she will not be able to function at the highest level of her ability, or even at her usual level, during this time. Reconstructing the trauma is ambitious work. It requires some slackening of ordinary life demands, some “tolerance for the state of being ill.” Most often the uncovering work can proceed within the ordinary social framework of the patient’s life. Occasionally the demands of the therapeutic work may require a protective setting, such as a planned hospital stay. Active uncovering work should not be undertaken at times when immediate life crises claim the patient’s attention or when other important goals take priority.Read more at location 3791

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The completed narrative must include a full and vivid description of the traumatic imagery. Jessica Wolfe describes her approach to the trauma narrative with combat veterans: “We have them reel it off in great detail, as though they were watching a movie, and with all the senses included. We ask them what they are seeing, what they are hearing, what they are smelling, what they are feeling, and what they are thinking.” Terence Keane stresses the importance of bodily sensations in reconstructing a complete memory: “If you don’t ask specifically about the smells, the heart racing, the muscle tension, the weakness in their legs, they will avoid going through that because it’s so aversive.”Read more at location 3808

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The therapist must help the patient move back and forth in time, from her protected anchorage in the present to immersion in the past, so that she can simultaneously reexperience the feelings in all their intensity while holding on to the sense of safe connection that was destroyed in the traumatic moment.Read more at location 3824

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The traumatic event challenges an ordinary person to become a theologian, a philosopher, and a jurist. The survivor is called upon to articulate the values and beliefs that she once held and that the trauma destroyed. She stands mute before the emptiness of evil, feeling the insufficiency of any known system of explanation. Survivors of atrocity of every age and every culture come to a point in their testimony where all questions are reduced to one, spoken more in bewilderment than in outrage: Why? The answer is beyond human understanding.Read more at location 3828

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When asked what advice they would give to therapists, survivors most commonly cite the importance of the therapist’s validating role.Read more at location 3848

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As the therapist listens, she must constantly remind herself to make no assumptions about either the facts or the meaning of the trauma to the patient. If she fails to ask detailed questions, she risks superimposing her own feelings and her own interpretation onto the patient’s story. What seems like a minor detail to the therapist may be the most important aspect of the story to the patient. Conversely, an aspect of the story that the therapist finds intolerable may be of lesser significance to the patient. Clarifying these discrepant points of view can enhance the mutual understanding of the trauma story.Read more at location 3853

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If “dirty work” is to be done, it should begin within the first third of the session; otherwise it should be postponed. Intense exploration is done in the second third of the session, while the last third is set aside to allow the patient to reorient and calm herself.Read more at location 4025

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The survivor frequently resists mourning, not only out of fear but also out of pride. She may consciously refuse to grieve as a way of denying victory to the perpetrator. In this case it is important to reframe the patient’s mourning as an act of courage rather than humiliation. To the extent that the patient is unable to grieve, she is cut off from a part of herself and robbed of an important part of her healing. Reclaiming the ability to feel the full range of emotions, including grief, must be understood as an act of resistance rather than submission to the perpetrator’s intent. Only through mourning everything that she has lost can the patient discover her indestructible inner life.Read more at location 4055

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The psychiatrist Michael Stone, drawing on his work with incest survivors, describes the immensity of this adaptive task: “All victims of incest have, by definition, been taught that the strong can do as they please, without regard for convention. . . . Re-education is often indicated, pertaining to what is typical, average, wholesome, and ‘normal’ in the intimate life of ordinary people. Victims of incest tend to be woefully ignorant of these matters, owing to their skewed and secretive early environments. Although victims in their original homes, they are like strangers in a foreign country, once ‘safely’ outside.”Read more at location 4232

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While some survivors wish to confront their perpetrators, many more wish to disclose the secret to nonoffending family members. The survivor should be encouraged to consider first approaching those family members who might be sympathetic, before proceeding to confront those who might be implacably hostile. Just like self-defense training, direct involvement in family conflicts often requires a series of graded exercises, in which the survivor masters one level of fear before choosing to proceed to higher levels of exposure.Read more at location 4328

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When others bear witness to the testimony of a crime, others share the responsibility for restoring justice.Read more at location 4518

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In retrospect, I feel about my life the way some people feel about war. If you survive, then it becomes a good war.Read more at location 4589

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people who enter a dissociative state at the time of the traumatic event are among those most likely to develop long-lasting PTSD.Read more at location 5098

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Like traumatized individuals, traumatized countries need to remember, grieve, and atone for their wrongs in order to avoid reliving them.Read more at location 5170

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Since 2004, the U.S. Army suicide rate has increased, with deaths by suicide in some years exceeding the number of deaths in combat.Read more at location 5341

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Sadly, the men who most needed mental health services were the least likely to seek help. When asked to name possible concerns that might prevent them from seeking counseling, 65 percent of the men in one study said they feared they “would be seen as weak.” These soldiers believed that their leadership or members of their unit might have less confidence in them if they were known to have spoken to a counselor. The shame of failing to live up to an invulnerable warrior ideal silenced these men and condemned them to suffer in isolation.9 In this regard, little has changed since the war in Vietnam.Read more at location 5345

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Terence Keane also cites boredom with the trauma story as a sign of completionRead more at location 7328

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The first flyer raised an average of $1.16 from each student. The second flyer, in which the plight of millions became the plight of one, raised $2.83. The students, it seems, were willing to take some responsibility for helping Rokia, but when faced with the scale of the global problem, they felt discouraged.Read more at location 262

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The point is simple: Talking about the problems of the world without talking about some accessible solutions is the way to paralysis rather than progress.Read more at location 337

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The answer depends on whether the strategy is feasible: Buy just a little to start with, make a little extra money, and then reinvest the proceeds, to make even more money, and repeat. But maybe fertilizer is not easy to buy in small quantities. Or perhaps it takes several tries before you can get it to work. Or there are problems with reinvesting the gains. One could think of many reasons why a farmer might find it difficult to get started on his own.Read more at location 411

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Robert Jensen and Nolan Miller found a particularly striking example of the “flight to quality” in food consumption.7 In two regions of China, they offered randomly selected poor households a large subsidy on the price of the basic staple (wheat noodles in one region, rice in the other). We usually expect that when the price of something goes down, people buy more of it. The opposite happened. Households that received subsidies for rice or wheat consumed less of those two items and ate more shrimp and meat, even though their staples now cost less. Remarkably, overall, the caloric intake of those who received the subsidy did not increase (and may even have decreased), despite the fact that their purchasing power had increased. Neither did the nutritional content improve in any other sense. The likely explanation is that because the staple formed such a large part of the household budget, the subsidies had made them richer. If the consumption of the staple is associated with being poor (say, because it is cheap but not particularly tasty), feeling richer might actually have made them consume less of it. Once again, this suggests that at least among these very poor urban households, getting more calories was not a priority: Getting better-tasting ones was.Read more at location 584

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In the Philippines, a study found that workers who worked both for a piece rate and for a flat wage ate 25 percent more food on days they worked for piece rate (where effort mattered, since the more they worked, the more they got paid).Read more at location 760

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Although micronutrients are cheap and can sometimes lead to a large increase in lifetime income, it is necessary to know exactly what to eat (or what pills to take). Not everyone has the information, even in the United States.Read more at location 764

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Understanding the importance of popular support, Antoine Parmentier, an eighteenth-century French pharmacist who was an early fan of the potato, clearly anticipating resistance, offered the public a set of recipes he had invented using potatoes, including the classic dish Hachis Parmentier (essentially what the British call shepherd’s pie, a layered casserole composed of ground meat with a covering of mashed potatoes). He thereby set off a trajectory that ultimately led, through many twists and turns, to the invention of “freedom fries.”Read more at location 769

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Also, it is not very easy to learn about the value of many of these nutrients based on personal experience. Iodine might make your children smarter, but the difference is not huge (though a number of small differences may add up to something big) and in most cases you will not find out either way for many years. Iron, even if it makes people stronger, does not suddenly turn you into a superhero: The $40 extra a year the self-employed man earned may not even have been apparent to him, given the many ups and downs of his weekly income. Consequently, it is no surprise that the poor choose their foods not mainly for their cheap prices and nutritional values, but for how good they taste.Read more at location 773

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When you are unemployed, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food.You want to eat something a little tasty. There is always some cheap pleasant thing to tempt you.Read more at location 785

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In South Africa, social norms on how much to spend on funerals were set at a time when most deaths occurred in old age or in infancy.31 Tradition called for infants to be buried very simply but for elders to have elaborate funerals, paid for with money the deceased had accumulated over a lifetime. As a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, many prime-age adults started dying without having accumulated burial savings, but their families felt compelled to honor the norm for adults. A family that had just lost one of its main potential earners might have to spend something like 3,400 rand (around $825 USD PPP), or 40 percent of the household annual per capita income, for the funeral party. After such a funeral, the family clearly has less to spend, and more family members tend to complain about “lack of food,” even when the deceased was not earning before he died, which suggests that funeral costs are responsible. The more expensive the funeral, the more depressed the adults are one year later, and the more likely it is that children have dropped out of school.Read more at location 793

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Generally, it is clear that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor. This may be a television, or a little bit of something special to eat—or just a cup of sugary tea. Even Pak Solhin had a television, although it was not working when we visited him. Festivals may be seen in this light as well. Where televisions or radios are not available, it is easy to see why the poor often seek out the distraction of a special family celebration of some kind, a religious observance, or a daughter’s wedding. In our eighteen-country data set, it is clear that the poor spend more on festivals when they are less likely to have a radio or a television. In Udaipur, India, where almost no one has a television, the extremely poor spend 14 percent of their budget on festivals (which includes both lay and religious occasions). By contrast, in Nicaragua, where 58 percent of rural poor households have a radio and 11 percent own a television, very few households report spending anything on festivals.Read more at location 815

B007CI81IQ 123261 Note: Add a note

These “indulgences” are not the impulsive purchases of people who are not thinking hard about what they are doing. They are carefully thought out, and reflect strong compulsions, whether internally driven or externally imposed. Oucha Mbarbk did not buy his TV on credit—he saved up over many months to scrape enough money together, just as the mother in India starts saving for her eight-year-old daughter’s wedding some ten years or more into the future, by buying a small piece of jewelry here and a stainless steel bucket there.Read more at location 834

B007CI81IQ 125638 Note: Add a note

The benefits of good nutrition may be particularly strong for two sets of people who do not decide what they eat: unborn babies and young children. In fact, there may well be an S-shaped relationship between their parent’s income and the eventual income of these children, caused by childhood nutrition. That is because a child who got the proper nutrients in utero or during early childhood will earn more money every year of his or her life: This adds up to large benefits over a lifetime. For example, the study of the long-term effect of deworming children in Kenya, mentioned above, concluded that being dewormed for two years instead of one (and hence being better nourished for two years instead of one) would lead to a lifetime income gain of $3,269 USD PPP. Small differences in investments in childhood nutrition (in Kenya, deworming costs $1.36 USD PPP per year; in India, a packet of iodized salt sells for $0.62 USD PPP; in Indonesia, fortified fish sauce costs $7 USD PPP per year) make a huge difference later on.Read more at location 853

B007CI81IQ 128950 Note: Add a note

Developing ways to pack foods that people like to eat with additional nutrients, and coming up with new strains of nutritious and tasty crops that can be grown in a wider range of environments, need to become priorities for food technology, on an equal footing with raising productivity.Read more at location 870

B007CI81IQ 130791 Note: Add a note

a child who grew up malaria-free earns 50 percent more per year, for his entire adult life,Read more at location 942

B007CI81IQ 141369 Note: Add a note

Decent sanitation facilities are even rarer among the poor—42 percent of the world’s population lives without a toilet at home.Read more at location 958

B007CI81IQ 143784 Note: Add a note

The issue is therefore not how much the poor spend on health, but what the money is spent on, which is often expensive cures rather than cheap prevention.Read more at location 1048

B007CI81IQ 157345 Note: Add a note

The poor mostly shun the free public health-care system. The average adult we interviewed in an extremely poor household saw a health-care provider once every two months. Of these visits, less than one-fourth were to a public facility.21 More than one-half were to private facilities. The remainder were to bhopas—traditional healers who primarily offer exorcism from evil spirits.Read more at location 1055

B007CI81IQ 158629 Note: Add a note

To make matters worse, learning about health care is inherently difficult not only for the poor, but for everyone.33 If patients are somehow convinced that they need shots to get better, there is little chance that they could ever learn they are wrong. Because most diseases that prompt visits to the doctor are self-limiting (i.e., they will disappear no matter what), there is a good chance that patients will feel better after a single shot of antibiotics. This naturally encourages spurious causal associations: Even if the antibiotics did nothing to cure the ailment, it is normal to attribute any improvement to them. By contrast, it is not natural to attribute causal force to inaction: If a person with the flu goes to the doctor, and the doctor does nothing, and the patient then feels better, the patient will correctly infer that it was not the doctor who was responsible for the cure. And rather than thanking the doctor for his forbearance, the patient will be tempted to think that it was lucky that everything worked out this time but that a different doctor should be seen for future problems.This reaction creates a natural tendency to overmedicate in a private, unregulated market. This is compounded by the fact that, in many cases, the prescriber and the provider are the same person, either because people turn to their pharmacists for medical advice, or because private doctors also stock and sell medicine.Read more at location 1202

B007CI81IQ a1D39BKSKBKQ9C 181674 Note: reminds me of khaneman's regression to the mean Edit

This kind of grasping at straws is not specific to poor countries.This is also what the privileged few in poor countries and the citizens of the First World do when they face a problem that they do not know how to remedy. In the United States, depression and back pains are two conditions that are both poorly understood and debilitating. This is why Americans are constantly going between psychiatrists and spiritual healers, or yoga classes and chiropractors. Since both conditions come and go, sufferers go through cycles of hope and disappointment, each time wanting to believe for a moment at least that the new cure must be working.Read more at location 1235

B007CI81IQ 185887 Note: Add a note

The issue of what beliefs mean to people came up a lot when Seva Mandir was considering what it could do to improve immunization, after discovering that even its system of well-run monthly camps left four-fifths of children not fully immunized. Some local experts argued that the issue was rooted in people’s belief systems. They claimed that immunization had no place in the traditional belief system—in rural Udaipur, among other places, traditional belief has it that children die because they catch the evil eye, and the way to catch the evil eye is by being displayed in public. This is why parents don’t take their children outside for the first year of life. Given this, the skeptical experts argued, it would be exceedingly difficult to convince villagers to immunize their children without first changing their beliefs. Notwithstanding these strong views, when Seva Mandir set up immunization camps in Udaipur, we managed to convince Neelima Khetan, Seva Mandir’s CEO, to try something on a pilot basis: offer 2 pounds of dal (dried beans, a staple in the area) for each immunization and a set of stainless steel plates for completing the course. The doctor in charge of Seva Mandir’s health program was initially quite reluctant to try this out. On the one hand, it seemed wrong to bribe people to do the right thing. They should learn on their own what is good for their health. On the other hand, the incentive we proposed seemed much too weak. If people do not immunize their children, given the huge benefits of doing so, they must have some strong reason behind it. If they believed, for example, that taking their children out would cause harm, 2 pounds of dal (worth only 40 rupees, or $1.83 USD PPP, less than half the daily wage earned by working in a public works site) was not going to persuade them.We had known people at Seva Mandir for long enough that we could persuade them that this was still an idea worth trying on a small scale, and thirty camps with incentives were established. They were a roaring success. The immunization rate in the village where the camps were set up increased sevenfold, to 38 percent. In all neighboring villages, within about 6 miles, it was also much higher. Seva Mandir discovered that offering the dal, paradoxically, actually lowered the cost per immunization by increasing efficiency, because the nurse, whose time was already paid for, was kept busy.Read more at location 1245

B007CI81IQ 189094 Note: Add a note

Both the right wing and the left wing seem to assume that action follows intention: that if people were convinced of the value of immunization, children would be immunized. This is not always true, and the implications are far-reaching.Read more at location 1281

B007CI81IQ 192383 Note: Add a note

An obvious place to start, given the high sensitivity to prices, is delivering preventive services for free or even rewarding households for getting them, and making getting them the natural default option when possible. Free Chlorin dispensers should be put next to water sources; parents should be rewarded for immunizing their children; children should be given free deworming medicines and nutritional supplements at school; and there should be public investment in water and sanitation infrastructure, at least in densely populated areas.Read more at location 1365

B007CI81IQ 205193 Note: Add a note

All this sounds paternalistic, and in a way, it certainly is. But then it is easy, too easy, to sermonize about the dangers of paternalism and the need to take responsibility for our own lives, from the comfort of our couch in our safe and sanitary home. Aren’t we, those who live in the rich world, the constant beneficiaries of a paternalism now so thoroughly embedded into the system that we hardly notice it? It not only ensures that we take care of ourselves better than we would if we had to be on top of every decision, but also, by freeing us from having to think about these issues, it gives us the mental space we need to focus on the rest of our lives.ThisRead more at location 1378

B007CI81IQ 207244 Note: Add a note

A World Bank study found, provocatively, that conditionality does not seem to matter at all:The researchers offered the families of school-age girls a transfer ranging between $5 and $20 USD PPP per month. In one group, the transfer was conditional on enrollment. In another, it wasn’t. A third group (the control group) did not receive a transfer. The effects were large (after a year, dropout was 11 percent in the control group, and only 6 percent among those who benefited from the transfer), but they were the same for those who received the conditional transfer and for those who got the unconditional one, suggesting that parents did not need to be forced to send their children to school, they needed to be helped financially.12 Subsequently, another study that compared conditional and unconditional transfers in Morocco found similar results.Read more at location 1539

B007CI81IQ 231738 Note: Add a note

The income transfer, by moving parents out of extreme poverty, may also have given the mental space to take a longer view of life: Schooling is something where the costs are paid now (you have to nag—or drag—your children into school now) and it only pays off when they are older.Read more at location 1548

B007CI81IQ 232463 Note: Add a note

One study19 found that an excellent predictor of the supply of private schools in a Pakistani village is whether a secondary girl’s school had been set up in the area a generation earlier. Educated girls, looking for an opportunity to make some money without having to leave the village, were increasingly entering the education business as teachers.Read more at location 1602

B007CI81IQ 240601 Note: Add a note

The study found that, on average, teachers gave significantly lower grades to lower-caste students when they could see their caste than when they could not. But interestingly, it was not the higher-caste teachers who were doing this. The lower-caste teachers were actually more likely to assign worse grades to lower-caste students.Read more at location 1751

B007CI81IQ 262968 Note: Add a note

Women do better on math tests when they are explicitly told that the stereotype that women are worse in math does not apply to this particular test; African Americans do worse on tests if they have to start by indicating their race on the cover sheet.Read more at location 1767

B007CI81IQ 265161 Note: Add a note

The school Abhijit went to in Calcutta had a more or less explicit policy of expelling the bottom of the class every year, so that by the time the graduation exam came around, it could claim a perfect pass record.Read more at location 1793

B007CI81IQ 269097 Note: Add a note

The problem is that there are no straightforward ways to identify talent, unless one is willing to spend a lot of time doing what the education system should have been doing: giving people enough chances to show what they are good at.YetRead more at location 1834

B007CI81IQ 275191 Note: Add a note

A study of charter schools in Boston suggests that expanding fourfold the capacity of charter schools and keeping the demographic profile of students the same would have the potential to erase up to 40 percent of the citywide gap in math test scores between white and black children.Read more at location 1865

B007CI81IQ 279944 Note: Add a note

A second piece of good news from Pratham’s work is that it takes relatively little training to be an effective remedial teacher, at least in the lower grades. The volunteers who had such dramatic effects were mostly college students and other people with a week or ten days of training in pedagogy. Moreover, this extends beyond teaching only reading and basic arithmetic. The same program in Bihar that put volunteers in classrooms also had them teach the children who could read well to use their reading skills to learn—Pratham calls this Reading to Learn, the sequel to its more basic Learning to Read—and the learning gains were substantial. Charter schools mainly use young, enthusiastic teachers, and they are able to significantly help both primary-school and middle-school children.Read more at location 1869

B007CI81IQ 281133 Note: Add a note

When students were assigned according to their initial level, so that the teachers could address the children’s needs better, students at all levels of initial achievement did better. And the gains were persistent: At the end of third grade, students who had been tracked in first and second grades were still doing better than those who had not been tracked.Read more at location 1879

B007CI81IQ 282083 Note: Add a note

One possibility is to make the boundaries between the grades more fluid, so that a child whose age puts him in fifth grade but who needs to take second-grade classes in some subjects can do so without additional stigma.Read more at location 1882

B007CI81IQ 282460 Note: Add a note

More generally, a lot could be done to change the unrealistic expectations that everyone has. A program in Madagascar that simply told parents about the average income gains from spending one more year in school for children from backgrounds similar to theirs had a sizable positive effect on test scores, and, in the case of parents who found out that they had underestimated the benefits of education, the gains were twice as large.40 An earlier study in the Dominican Republic produced similar results with high school students.41 Since it is essentially free to have teachers simply pass on information to parents, this is so far the cheapest known way to improve test scores, among all the interventions that have been evaluated.Read more at location 1884

B007CI81IQ 283372 Note: Add a note

the United States, rewarding children for achieving long-term goals (such as getting high grades) was not successful, but rewarding them for effort on reading proved extremely effective.Read more at location 1894

B007CI81IQ 284206 Note: Add a note

The current view of the use of technology in teaching in the education community is, however, not particularly positive. But this is based mainly on experience from the rich countries, where the alternative to being taught by the computer is, to a large extent, being taught by a well-trained and motivated teacher. As we have seen, this is not always the case in poor countries. And in fact, the evidence from the developing world, though sparse, is quite positive. We did an evaluation of a computer-assisted learning program run in collaboration with Pratham in the government schools in Vadodara in the early 2000s. The program was simple. Pairs of third- and fourth-graders got to play a game on the computer. The game involved solving progressively more difficult math problems; success in solving them gave the winner a chance to shoot some garbage into outer space (this was a very politically correct game). Despite the fact that they only got to play for two hours a week, the gains from this program in terms of math scores were as large as those of some of the most successful education interventions that have been tried in various contexts over the years, and this was true across the board—the strongest children did better, and so did the weakest children. This highlights what is particularly good about the computer as a learning tool: Each child is able to set his or her own pace through the program.Read more at location 1897

B007CI81IQ 285901 Note: Add a note

In the meantime, however, generalized suspicion of the motivations of the state seems to be one of the most durable residues of the Emergency; for example, one still routinely hears of people in slums and villages refusing pulse polio drops because they believe it is a way to secretly sterilize children.Read more at location 1954

B007CI81IQ 293275 Note: Add a note

fact that today countries with higher fertility rates are poorer doesn’t tell us that they are poorer because of high fertility: It could instead be that they have high fertility because they are poor, or some third factor could cause both high fertility and poverty.Read more at location 1994

B007CI81IQ 299297 Note: Add a note

no evidence that children born in smaller families are really more educated.Read more at location 2019

B007CI81IQ 302865 Note: Add a note

there is certainly a need for more research, but for now, our reading of the evidence, contrary to what Sachs argues in Common Wealth, is that there is no smoking gun to prove that larger families are bad for children. As such, it is hard to justify top-down family planning as a means of protecting children from having to grow up in large families.Read more at location 2044

B007CI81IQ 306884 Note: Add a note

women age thirty to fifty-five in 1996 had on average 1.2 fewer children in treatment areas than those in control areas.Read more at location 2079

B007CI81IQ 311925 Note: Add a note

The Matlab program may have simply accelerated a trend toward fertility reduction that was happening in the rest of the country. So at best, this one seems to be a draw.Read more at location 2088

B007CI81IQ 313276 Note: Add a note

This strategy presumes that adolescents are not responsible or smart enough to weigh the costs and benefits of sexual activity and condom use. If this were indeed the case, scaring them away from sex altogether (or at least from sex outside marriage) would be the only way to protect them. But several simultaneous experiments that Esther, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer conducted in Kenya suggest that, quite to the contrary, adolescents make carefully calculated, if not fully informed, choices about whom to have sex with and under what conditions.Read more at location 2113

B007CI81IQ 317491 Note: Add a note

In Peru, for example, when former squatters were handed out property rights, fertility declined in households that got a title (compared to those that got nothing), but only if the woman’s name was included on the title along with that of the man.Read more at location 2154

B007CI81IQ 323325 Note: Add a note

Compared to cases where husbands were involved, women who were seen alone were 23 percent more likely to visit a family-planning nurse, 38 percent more likely to ask for a relatively concealable form of contraception (injectable contraceptives or contraceptive implants), and 57 percent less likely to report an unwanted birth nine to fourteen months later.29 One of the reasons the Matlab program changed fertility choices more than other family-planning programs is probably also that by visiting the women in their houses, presumably when the husbands were away, the female health worker may have enabled some of them to adopt family planning without his knowledge.Read more at location 2162

B007CI81IQ 325002 Note: Add a note

Munshi found that in Matlab villages where there was a community health worker, women were more likely to adopt contraceptives if village members of their own religious group had had higher contraceptive use over the previous six months. Even though both Hindus and Muslims within the village had access to the same health worker and had exactly the same access to contraceptives, Hindus adopted contraceptive use when other Hindus were doing so and Muslims adopted contraceptives when other Muslims did. The contraceptive adoption by Hindus had no effect on the adoption by their Muslim neighbors, and vice versa. This pattern, Munshi concludes, must mean that the women were progressively learning about what was acceptable behavior within their communities.Read more at location 2179

B007CI81IQ 327469 Note: Add a note

It is not easy, for example, to ask certain questions (Is contraception against religion? Will it make me permanently barren? Where can I find it?) because the act of asking itself reveals your inclinations. As a result, people often pick up things from the most unlikely sources. In Brazil, a Catholic country, the state has carefully stayed away from encouraging family planning. However, television is very popular, in particular the telenovelas (soap operas) that air on prime time on one of the main channels, Rede Globo. From the 1970s through the 1990s, access to the Rede Globo channel expanded dramatically, and with it the viewership of the telenovelas. At the telenovelas’ peak popularity in the 1980s, the characters in the soaps tended to be very different from the average Brazilian in terms of both class and social attitudes: Whereas the average Brazilian woman had almost six children in 1970, in the soap operas most female characters under the age of fifty had none, and the rest had one. Right after soaps became available in an area, the number of births would drop sharply; moreover, women who had children in those areas named their children after the main characters in the soap.31 The novelas ended up projecting a very different vision of the good life than the one that Brazilians were used to, with historic consequences. This was not entirely accidental—in Brazil’s straitlaced society, the soap opera ended up being the outlet of choice for many creative and progressive artists.Read more at location 2185

B007CI81IQ 329200 Note: Add a note

The very strong substitution between family size and savings may help us explain the surprising finding that having fewer children does not translate into healthier or better-educated children: If parents who have fewer children expect lower money transfers in the future, they also need to save more in anticipation, and this cuts into the funds they have available for investing in the children they have. Indeed, if investing in children tends to have a much higher return than investing in financial assets (after all, feeding a child is not that expensive), families may actually be poorer in a lifetime sense when they have fewer children.Read more at location 2235

B007CI81IQ 335886 Note: Add a note

the mortality differential between boys and girls decreases when a girl’s marriage prospects are brighter; in contrast, economic growth in the village, which increases the value of investing in boys (because they stay home), leads to a widening of the mortality gap between boys and girls.Read more at location 2268

B007CI81IQ 340420 Note: Add a note

Using a little bit of fertilizer on a plot increases its productivity a great deal, but increasing the amount beyond that initial level does not do very much—it is more effective to use a little bit of fertilizer on all the plots than a lot of fertilizer on just one plot. But most of the fertilizer in the Burkina Faso households was used on the husband’s plot: By reallocating some of the fertilizer plus a bit of labor to the wives’ plots, the family could increase its production by 6 percent without spending an extra penny. Families were literally throwing money away because they could not agree on the best way to use the resources they had.Read more at location 2304

B007CI81IQ 346222 Note: Add a note

There is no way for anyone to make sure that parents feed their children the right number of yams, but society may be able to sanction or show disapproval of parents who are seen selling yams to buy sneakers.Read more at location 2335

B007CI81IQ 350342 Note: Add a note

For the most part, it seems that, once again, things were not a lot worse for the poor than in any other year, precisely because their situation is always rather bad. They were dealing with problems that were all too familiar. For the poor, every year feels like being in the middle of a colossal financial crisis.Read more at location 2472

B007CI81IQ 371089 Note: Add a note

Facing risk (not only income risk but also the risk of death or disease) makes us worry, and worrying makes us stressed and depressed. Symptoms of depression are much more prevalent among the poor. Being stressed makes it harder to focus, which in turn may make us less productive. In particular, there is a strong association between poverty and the level of cortisol produced by the body, an indicator of stress. And conversely, the cortisol levels go down when households receive some help. The children of the beneficiaries of PROGRESA, the Mexican cash transfer program, have, for example, been found to have significantly lower levels of cortisol than comparable children whose mothers did not benefit from the program. This is important, because it turns out that cortisol directly impairs cognitive and decision-making ability. The stress-induced release of cortisol affects brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the hippocampus, which are important in cognitive functioning; in particular, the prefrontal cortex is important in suppression of impulsive responses. It is therefore no surprise that when experimental subjects are artificially put under stressful conditions in the laboratory, they are less likely to make the economically rational decision when faced with choosing among different alternatives.Read more at location 2505

B007CI81IQ 376941 Note: Add a note

If all the poor laborers want to work more when times are bad (for example, because there is a drought or input prices have gone up), they compete with each other, which drives wages down. The situation is intensified if they cannot find a job outside the village. The result is that the same kind of drought has a more negative effect on wages in those villages in India that are more isolated, where it is harder for workers to go outside to look for work. In those places, working more is not necessarily an effective way of coping with getting paid less.Read more at location 2516

B007CI81IQ 377915 Note: Add a note

In a survey of twenty-seven villages in West Bengal, even households that claimed to farm a piece of land spent only 40 percent of their time farming.10 The median family in this survey had three working members and seven occupations. Generally, though most rural families have something to do with agriculture, it is rarely their sole occupation.Read more at location 2524

B007CI81IQ 378900 Note: Add a note

The risk borne by the poor is thus not only costly once a shock hits: The fear that something bad might happen has a debilitating effect on poor people’s ability to fully realize their potential.Read more at location 2561

B007CI81IQ 384327 Note: Add a note

“I know her character isn’t bad,” the man said. “If I were in her position, I would probably steal, too. When little things disappear, I try not to get angry. I think ‘The person who took this is hungrier than me.’”Read more at location 2609

B007CI81IQ 391437 Note: Add a note

This view of insurance as mainly a moral duty to help someone in need explains why, in the Nigerian villages, villagers helped each other out on an individual basis, instead of all contributing to a common pot, despite the fact that sharing risk in this other way would be more efficient.Read more at location 2616

B007CI81IQ 392622 Note: Add a note

If insurance is not mandatory, those who know that they are likely to have a problem in the future may be more likely to get insurance. This would be fine as long as the insurer also knows that, because it could be factored into the premium. But if the insurance company is unable to identify those who are joining because they want care now, all they can do is raise the premium on everyone. The higher price, however, makes things worse, as it drives away those who know they will probably not need the insurance, thus exacerbating the original problem. This is why, in the United States, getting health insurance at reasonable prices is very difficult for those who cannot get it through their employers. And this is why affordable health insurance programs tend to be mandatory—if everyone isRead more at location 2642

B007CI81IQ 397046 Note: Add a note

Strange as it might seem, this emphasis on contract enforcement could also drive the poor to borrow from those who have the power to really hurt them if they were to default, since such lenders would not need to spend as much time monitoring (their borrowers wouldn’t dare to stray) and the loans would be cheaper.Read more at location 2871

B007CI81IQ 430962 Note: Add a note

One way to summarize all these results is to observe that, in many ways, the focus on “zero default” that characterizes most MFIs is too stringent for many potential borrowers. In particular, there is a clear tension between the spirit of microcredit and true entrepreneurship, which is usually associated with taking risks and, no doubt, occasionally failing. It has been argued, for example, that the American model, where bankruptcy is (or at least was) relatively easy and does not carry much of a stigma (in contrast with the European model, in particular), has a lot to do with the vitality of its entrepreneurial culture. By contrast, the MFI rules are set up not to tolerate any failure.Read more at location 3054

B007CI81IQ 458779 Note: Add a note

Finding ways to finance medium-scale enterprises is the next big challenge for finance in developing countries.Read more at location 3173

B007CI81IQ 475961 Note: Add a note

He explained to us that he always bought the fertilizer in advance, because, like the Modimbas, he knew that money kept in the house would not be saved: When there is money in the house, things always happen, he said, and the money disappears.Read more at location 3340

B007CI81IQ 501216 Note: Add a note

Knowing that we will have one drink too many again tomorrow gives most of us no pleasure—indeed, it probably makes us unhappy—yet when tomorrow comes along many of us cannot resist it. Alcohol, in this sense, is a temptation good for many people, something that makes immediate claims on us without giving us anticipatory pleasure.Read more at location 3377

B007CI81IQ 506784 Note: Add a note

The enterprises of the poor often seem more a way to buy a job when a more conventional employment opportunity is not available than a reflection of a particular entrepreneurial urge.Read more at location 3866

B007CI81IQ 579963 Note: Add a note

Perhaps the many businesses of the poor are less a testimony to their entrepreneurial spirit than a symptom of the dramatic failure of the economies in which they live to provide them with something better.Read more at location 3875

B007CI81IQ 581308 Note: Add a note

Everywhere we have asked, the most common dream of the poor is that their children become government workers.Read more at location 3878

B007CI81IQ 581766 Note: Add a note

The emphasis on government jobs, in particular, suggests a desire for stability, as these jobs tend to be very secure even when they are not very exciting.Read more at location 3883

B007CI81IQ 582489 Note: Add a note

Perhaps the sense of control over the future that people get from knowing there will be an income coming in every month—and not just the income itself—is what allows these women to focus on building their own careers and those of their children.Read more at location 3920

B007CI81IQ 588144 Note: Add a note

It seems that the district officials had been happy to embezzle the money when no one was watching but stopped when that became more difficult. A generalized theft of government funds was possible, it seems, mainly because no one had bothered to worry about it.Read more at location 4040

B007CI81IQ 606143 Note: Add a note

The same kind of philosophy we have advocated throughout this book—attend to the details, understand how people decide, and be willing to experiment—applies as much to politics as it does to everything else.Read more at location 4332

B007CI81IQ 649975 Note: Add a note

In villages that had never had reserved seats for women, and therefore had no experience of a woman leader, men who heard the “male” speech gave higher approval ratings than those who heard the “female” speech. On the other hand, in villages that had been reserved for women before, men tended to like the “female” speech better. Men did recognize that women were capable of implementing good policies and changed their opinion of women leaders.Read more at location 4476

B007CI81IQ 671741 Note: Add a note

Given that economic growth requires manpower and brainpower, it seems plausible, however, that whenever that spark occurs, it is more likely to catch fire if women and men are properly educated, well fed, and healthy, and if citizens feel secure and confident enough to invest in their children, and to let them leave home to get the new jobs in the city.Read more at location 4538

B007CI81IQ 680950 Note: Add a note

Big people, who need a lot of food, died first. Smaller fellows survived much better. Over the generations, the people of Flores became dwarves. This unique species, known by scientists as Homo floresiensis, reached a maximum height of only 3.5 feet and weighed no more than fifty-five pounds. They were nevertheless able to produce stone tools, and even managed occasionally to hunt down some of the island’s elephants – though, to be fair, the elephants were a dwarf species as well.Read more at location 153

B00ICN066A 23332 Note: Add a note

Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.Read more at location 228

B00ICN066A 34532 Note: Add a note

(Archaeologists have discovered the bones of Neanderthals who lived for many years with severe physical handicaps, evidence that they were cared for by their relatives.)Read more at location 269

B00ICN066A 40421 Note: Add a note

Zoologists have identified one call that means, ‘Careful! An eagle!’ A slightly different call warns, ‘Careful! A lion!’ When researchers played a recording of the first call to a group of monkeys, the monkeys stopped what they were doing and looked upwards in fear. When the same group heard a recording of the second call, the lion warning, they quickly scrambled up a tree.Read more at location 377

B00ICN066A 56802 Note: Add a note

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands.Read more at location 451

B00ICN066A 67710 Note: Add a note

Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.Read more at location 464

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Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.Read more at location 531

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Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths – by telling different stories.Read more at location 551

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In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens. But in a conflict of hundreds, Neanderthals wouldn’t stand a chance.Read more at location 583

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From the Cognitive Revolution onwards, historical narratives replace biological theories as our primary means of explaining the development of Homo sapiens.Read more at location 633

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We obviously have no written records from the age of foragers, and the archaeological evidence consists mainly of fossilised bones and stone tools. Artefacts made of more perishable materials – such as wood, bamboo or leather – survive only under unique conditions. The common impression that pre-agricultural humans lived in an age of stone is a misconception based on this archaeological bias. The Stone Age should more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood.Read more at location 710

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It’s much the same dilemma that a future historian would face if he had to depict the social world of twenty-first-century teenagers solely on the basis of their surviving snail mail – since no records will remain of their phone conversations, emails, blogs and text messages.Read more at location 729

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The heated debates about Homo sapiens’ ‘natural way of life’ miss the main point. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.Read more at location 759

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When the first Americans marched south from Alaska into the plains of Canada and the western United States, they encountered mammoths and mastodons, rodents the size of bears, herds of horses and camels, oversized lions and dozens of large species the likes of which are completely unknown today, among them fearsome sabre-tooth cats and giant ground sloths that weighed up to eight tons and reached a height of twenty feet.Read more at location 1161

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Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.Read more at location 1213

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No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years.Read more at location 1245

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Of the thousands of species that our ancestors hunted and gathered, only a few were suitable candidates for farming and herding. Those few species lived in particular places, and those are the places where agricultural revolutions occurred.Read more at location 1257

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The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2Read more at location 1272

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We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.Read more at location 1292

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The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.Read more at location 1398

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there was an obvious limit to such long-term planning. Paradoxically, it saved foragers a lot of anxieties. There was no sense in worrying about things that they could not influence.Read more at location 1581

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from the very advent of agriculture, worries about the future became major players in the theatre of the human mind.Read more at location 1592

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Just as people were never created, neither, according to the science of biology, is there a ‘Creator’ who ‘endows’ them with anything. There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals. ‘Endowed by their creator’ should be translated simply into ‘born’.Read more at location 1738

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We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society.Read more at location 1756

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A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative. Some of these efforts take the shape of violence and coercion.Read more at location 1767

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It is quite common to argue that the elite may do so out of cynical greed. Yet a cynic who believes in nothing is unlikely to be greedy. It does not take much to provide the objective biological needs of Homo sapiens. After those needs are met, more money can be spent on building pyramids, taking holidays around the world, financing election campaigns, funding your favourite terrorist organisation, or investing in the stock market and making yet more money – all of which are activities that a true cynic would find utterly meaningless.Read more at location 1783

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How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature.Read more at location 1794

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the most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘Follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths.Read more at location 1828

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People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism.Read more at location 1836

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Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can.Read more at location 1838

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Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.Read more at location 1855

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There is no way out of the imagined order. When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.Read more at location 1890

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(The Sumerians used a combination of base-6 and base-10 numeral systems. Their base-6 system bestowed on us several important legacies, such as the division of the day into twenty-four hours and of the circle into 360 degrees.)Read more at location 1953

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It is telling that the first recorded name in history belongs to an accountant, rather than a prophet, a poet or a great conqueror.1Read more at location 1962

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Full script is a system of material signs that can represent spoken language more or less completely. It can therefore express everything people can say, including poetry. Partial script, on the other hand, is a system of material signs that can represent only particular types of information, belonging to a limited field of activity.Read more at location 1977

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Yet it’s a proven fact that most rich people are rich for the simple reason that they were born into a rich family, while most poor people will remain poor throughout their lives simply because they were born into a poor family.Read more at location 2151

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Trapped in this vicious circle, blacks were not hired for white-collar jobs because they were deemed unintelligent, and the proof of their inferiority was the paucity of blacks in white-collar jobs.Read more at location 2250

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Clennon King, a black student who applied to the University of Mississippi in 1958, was forcefully committed to a mental asylum. The presiding judge ruled that a black person must surely be insane to think that he could be admitted to the University of Mississippi.Read more at location 2260

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Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths. That is one good reason to study history.Read more at location 2275

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biological distinctions between different groups of Homo sapiens are, in fact, negligible,Read more at location 2278

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Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.Read more at location 2395

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This network of artificial instincts is called ‘culture’.Read more at location 2515

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But none of these foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico.Read more at location 2626

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This is perhaps its most basic quality. Everyone always wants money because everyone else also always wants money, which means you can exchange money for whatever you want or need.Read more at location 2762

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Merchants travelling between India and the Mediterranean would notice the difference in the value of gold. In order to make a profit, they would buy gold cheaply in India and sell it dearly in the Mediterranean. Consequently, the demand for gold in India would skyrocket, as would its value. At the same time the Mediterranean would experience an influx of gold, whose value would consequently drop. Within a short time the value of gold in India and the Mediterranean would be quite similar. The mere fact that Mediterranean people believed in gold would cause Indians to start believing in it as well. Even if Indians still had no real use for gold, the fact that Mediterranean people wanted it would be enough to make the Indians value it.Read more at location 2871

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Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.Read more at location 2883

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When everything is convertible, and when trust depends on anonymous coins and cowry shells, it corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing them with the cold laws of supply and demand.Read more at location 2889

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Many Americans nowadays maintain that their government has a moral imperative to bring Third World countries the benefits of democracy and human rights, even if these goods are delivered by cruise missiles and F-16s.Read more at location 3085

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In the imperial United States, an American president of Kenyan blood can munch on Italian pizza while watching his favourite film, Lawrence of Arabia, a British epic about the Arab rebellion against the Turks.Read more at location 3092

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In the 300 years from the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.Read more at location 3327

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In one of history’s strangest twists, this esoteric Jewish sect took over the mighty Roman Empire.Read more at location 3363

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Logically, it is impossible. Either you believe in a single omnipotent God or you believe in two opposing powers, neither of which is omnipotent. Still, humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions. So it should not come as a surprise that millions of pious Christians, Muslims and Jews manage to believe at one and the same time in an omnipotent God and an independent Devil.Read more at location 3435

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We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine. For example, studying how Europeans came to dominate Africans enables us to realise that there is nothing natural or inevitable about the racial hierarchy, and that the world might well be arranged differently.Read more at location 3724

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Modern-day science is a unique tradition of knowledge, inasmuch as it openly admits collective ignorance regarding the most important questions.Read more at location 3874

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There is poetic justice in the fact that a quarter of the world, and two of its seven continents, are named after a little-known Italian whose sole claim to fame is that he had the courage to say, ‘We don’t know.’Read more at location 4449

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They created the world as we know it, including the ideologies we use in order to judge them.Read more at location 4679

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Banks are allowed to loan $10 for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 per cent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes.2Read more at location 4752

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An oil-rich country cursed with a despotic government, endemic warfare and a corrupt judicial system will usually receive a low credit rating. As a result, it is likely to remain relatively poor since it will not be able to raise the necessary capital to make the most of its oil bounty. A country devoid of natural resources, but which enjoys peace, a fair judicial system and a free government is likely to receive a high credit rating. As such, it may be able to raise enough cheap capital to support a good education system and foster a flourishing high-tech industry.Read more at location 5083

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They never fitted into monkey society, had difficulties communicating with other monkeys, and suffered from high levels of anxiety and aggression. The conclusion was inescapable: monkeys must have psychological needs and desires that go beyond their material requirements, and if these are not fulfilled, they will suffer greatly.Read more at location 5364

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In the United States, even Memorial Day – originally a solemn day for remembering fallen soldiers – is now an occasion for special sales. Most people mark this day by going shopping, perhaps to prove that the defenders of freedom did not die in vain.Read more at location 5406

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Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast ding-dongs. This information offered invaluable help to the Luftwaffe. When the British Secret Service discovered this, they replaced the live broadcast with a set recording of the famous clock.Read more at location 5498

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Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them.Read more at location 5578

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The modern family is still supposed to provide for intimate needs, which state and market are (so far) incapable of providing. Yet even here the family is subject to increasing interventions. The market shapes to an ever-greater degree the way people conduct their romantic and sexual lives. Whereas traditionally the family was the main matchmaker, today it’s the market that tailors our romantic and sexual preferences, and then lends a hand in providing for them – for a fat fee. Previously bride and groom met in the family living room, and money passed from the hands of one father to another. Today courting is done at bars and cafés, and money passes from the hands of lovers to waitresses. Even more money is transferred to the bank accounts of fashion designers, gym managers, dieticians, cosmeticians and plastic surgeons, who help us arrive at the café looking as similar as possible to the market’s ideal of beauty.Read more at location 5601

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Like money, limited liability companies and human rights, nations and consumer tribes are inter-subjective realities.Read more at location 5636

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It turns out that in the year following the 9/11 attacks, despite all the talk of terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.Read more at location 5701

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Perhaps people in modern affluent societies suffer greatly from alienation and meaninglessness despite their prosperity. And perhaps our less well-to-do ancestors found much contentment in community, religion and a bond with nature.Read more at location 5898

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Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health. People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of. Marriage is particularly important. Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery. This holds true irrespective of economic or even physical conditions. An impecunious invalid surrounded by a loving spouse, a devoted family and a warm community may well feel better than an alienated billionaire, provided that the invalid’s poverty is not too severe and that his illness is not degenerative or painful.Read more at location 5933

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You might say that we didn’t need a bunch of psychologists and their questionnaires to discover this. Prophets, poets and philosophers realised thousands of years ago that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want. Still, it’s nice when modern research – bolstered by lots of numbers and charts – reaches the same conclusions the ancients did.Read more at location 5949

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We moderns have an arsenal of tranquillisers and painkillers at our disposal, but our expectations of ease and pleasure, and our intolerance of inconvenience and discomfort, have increased to such an extent that we may well suffer from pain more than our ancestors ever did.Read more at location 5955

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If happiness is determined by expectations, then two pillars of our society – mass media and the advertising industry – may unwittingly be depleting the globe’s reservoirs of contentment.Read more at location 5967

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The scientist who says her life is meaningful because she increases the store of human knowledge, the soldier who declares that his life is meaningful because he fights to defend his homeland, and the entrepreneur who finds meaning in building a new company are no less delusional than their medieval counterparts who found meaning in reading scriptures, going on a crusade or building a new cathedral.Read more at location 6097

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So perhaps happiness is synchronising one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions.Read more at location 6100

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People who have been raised from infancy on a diet of such slogans are prone to believe that happiness is a subjective feeling and that each individual best knows whether she is happy or miserable. Yet this view is unique to liberalism.Read more at location 6116

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All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing – joy, anger, boredom, lust – but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been.Read more at location 6153

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Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha’s recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.Read more at location 6165

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scientists why they study the genome, or try to connect a brain to a computer, or try to create a mind inside a computer. Nine out of ten times you’ll get the same standard answer: we are doing it to cure diseases and save human lives. Even though the implications of creating a mind inside a computer are far more dramatic than curing psychiatric illnesses, this is the standard justification given, because nobody can argue with it.Read more at location 6462

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Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?Read more at location 6485

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Paradoxically, while psychological studies of subjective well-being rely on people’s ability to diagnose their happiness correctly, the basic raison d’être of psychotherapy is that people don’t really know themselves and that they sometimes need professional help to free themselves of self-destructive behaviours.Read more at location 7367

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The real rewards are reserved not for those who are comfortable using Facebook (a shallow task, easily replicated), but instead for those who are comfortable building the innovative distributed systems that run the service (a decidedly deep task, hard to replicate).Read more at location 160

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This brings us to the question of what deliberate practice actually requires. Its core components are usually identified as follows: (1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.Read more at location 371

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High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)Read more at location 426

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The results from this and her similar experiments were clear: “People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task,” and the more intense the residue, the worse the performance.Read more at location 449

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I’m picking on constant connectivity as a case study in this discussion, but it’s just one of many examples of business behaviors that are antithetical to depth, and likely reducing the bottom-line value produced by the company, that nonetheless thrive because, in the absence of metrics, most people fall back on what’s easiest.Read more at location 635

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Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.Read more at location 686

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In 2013, for example, Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer banned employees from working at home. She made this decision after checking the server logs for the virtual private network that Yahoo employees use to remotely log in to company servers. Mayer was upset because the employees working from home didn’t sign in enough throughout the day. She was, in some sense, punishing her employees for not spending more time checking e-mail (one of the primary reasons to log in to the servers).Read more at location 693

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This potent mixture of job ambiguity and lack of metrics to measure the effectiveness of different strategies allows behavior that can seem ridiculous when viewed objectively to thrive in the increasingly bewildering psychic landscape of our daily work.Read more at location 702

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desultory string of missives,Read more at location 711

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Like fingers pointing to the moon, other diverse disciplines from anthropology to education, behavioral economics to family counseling, similarly suggest that the skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.Read more at location 823

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Carstensen hypothesizes that the elderly subjects had trained the prefrontal cortex to inhibit the amygdala in the presence of negative stimuli. These elderly subjects were not happier because their life circumstances were better than those of the young subjects; they were instead happier because they had rewired their brains to ignore the negative and savor the positive. By skillfully managing their attention, they improved their world without changing anything concrete about it.Read more at location 842

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A workday driven by the shallow, from a neurological perspective, is likely to be a draining and upsetting day, even if most of the shallow things that capture your attention seem harmless or fun. The implication of these findings is clear. In work (and especially knowledge work), to increase the time you spend in a state of depth is to leverage the complex machinery of the human brain in a way that for several different neurological reasons maximizes the meaning and satisfaction you’ll associate with your working life.Read more at location 880

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“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”Read more at location 901

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He imagines a process in which you spend ninety minutes inside, take a ninety-minute break, and repeat two or three times—at which point your brain will have achieved its limit of concentration for the day.Read more at location 1028

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The goal, in other words, is to generate a rhythm for this work that removes the need for you to invest energy in deciding if and when you’re going to go deep.Read more at location 1189

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He knew he had the capacity to write an epic biography and understood it to be a key task in his professional advancement. This confidence goes a long way in motivating hard efforts.Read more at location 1247

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“[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.”Read more at location 1278

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Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured. For example, you might institute a ban on any Internet use, or maintain a metric such as words produced per twenty-minute interval to keep your concentration honed. Without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves.Read more at location 1293

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Because the building was cheaply constructed, these groups felt free to rearrange space as needed.Read more at location 1386

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This combination of soundproofed offices connected to large common areas yields a hub-and-spoke architecture of innovation in which both serendipitous encounter and isolated deep thinking are supported.Read more at location 1417

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“If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.”Read more at location 1483

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In other words, lead measures turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control in the near future that will then have a positive impact on your long-term goals. For an individual focused on deep work, it’s easy to identify the relevant lead measure: time spent in a state of deep work dedicated toward your wildly important goal.Read more at location 1496

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Whereas I used to cluster my deep thinking near paper submission deadlines, the 4DX habit kept my mind concentrated throughout the full year.Read more at location 1535

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(You might, of course, argue that perhaps being outside watching a sunset puts people in a good mood, and being in a good mood is what really helps performance on these tasks. But in a sadistic twist, the researchers debunked that hypothesis by repeating the experiment in the harsh Ann Arbor winter. Walking outside in brutal cold conditions didn’t put the subjects in a good mood, but they still ended up doing better on concentration tasks.)Read more at location 1606

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In Ericsson’s seminal 1993 paper on the topic, titled “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” he dedicates a section to reviewing what the research literature reveals about an individual’s capacity for cognitively demanding work. Ericsson notes that for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to as many as four hours—but rarely more.Read more at location 1625

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To succeed with this strategy, you must first accept the commitment that once your workday shuts down, you cannot allow even the smallest incursion of professional concerns into your field of attention. This includes, crucially, checking e-mail, as well as browsing work-related websites. In both cases, even a brief intrusion of work can generate a self-reinforcing stream of distraction that impedes the shutdown advantages described earlier for a long time to followRead more at location 1638

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make a rough plan for the next day. Once the plan is created, I say, “Shutdown complete,” and my work thoughts are done for the day.Read more at location 1656

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“Committing to a specific plan for a goal may therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal but may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits.”Read more at location 1668

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If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.Read more at location 1727

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the use of a distracting service does not, by itself, reduce your brain’s ability to focus. It’s instead the constant switching from low-stimuli/high-value activities to high-stimuli/low-value activities, at the slightest hint of boredom or cognitive challenge, that teaches your mind to never tolerate an absence of novelty.Read more at location 1761

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The key in making this change, however, is to not schedule the next Internet block to occur immediately. Instead, enforce at least a five-minute gap between the current moment and the next time you can go online. This gap is minor, so it won’t excessively impede your progress, but from a behavioralist perspective, it’s substantial because it separates the sensation of wanting to go online from the reward of actually doing so.Read more at location 1789

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The Any-Benefit Approach to Network Tool Selection: You’re justified in using a network tool if you can identify any possible benefit to its use, or anything you might possibly miss out on if you don’t use it.Read more at location 2030

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“Soil fertility is my baseline.”Read more at location 2076

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The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection: Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your professional and personal life. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweigh its negative impacts.Read more at location 2085

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It’s crucial, therefore, that you figure out in advance what you’re going to do with your evenings and weekends before they begin. Structured hobbies provide good fodder for these hours, as they generate specific actions with specific goals to fill your time. A set program of reading, à la Bennett, where you spend regular time each night making progress on a series of deliberately chosen books, is also a good option, as is, of course, exercise or the enjoyment of good (in-person) company.Read more at location 2335

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When it comes to e-mail, they believed, it’s the sender’s responsibility to convince the receiver that a reply is worthwhile.Read more at location 2790

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We very often fail to think as carefully about helping others as we could, mistakenly believing that applying data and rationality to a charitable endeavor robs the act of virtue. And that means we pass up opportunities to make a tremendous difference.Read more at location 233

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If you earn more than $52,000 per year, then, speaking globally, you are the 1 percent. If you earn at least $28,000—that’s the typical income for working individuals in the United States—you’re in the richest 5 percent of the world’s population. Even someone living below the US poverty line, earning just $11,000 per year, is still richer than 85 percent of people in the world. Because we’re used to judging ourselves in comparison with our peers, it’s easy to underestimate just how well off those of us in rich countries are.Read more at location 327

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Less than 10 percent of households possess a chair or a table.Read more at location 351

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Not all could be helped, so he prioritized and engaged in triage. If it were not for that cold, calculating, yet utterly necessary allocation of 1s, 2s, and 3s, how many more lives would have been lost? If he had made no choice—if he had put his hands in the air and claimed defeat, or if he had simply tried to treat whoever came in first—he would have made the worst choice of all.Read more at location 443

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If I were to give to the Fistula Foundation rather than to the charities I thought were most effective, I would be privileging the needs of some people over others merely because I happened to know them. That would be unfair to those I could have helped more. If I’d visited some other shelter in Ethiopia, or in any other country, I would have had a different set of personal connections. It was arbitrary that I’d seen this problem close up rather than any of the other problems in the world.Read more at location 591

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Moyo points to aid’s inefficiencies by focusing on typical aid programs. But to get a true picture of how much benefit the developing world has received from aid, one needs to focus instead on the best aid programs.Read more at location 640

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A good contender for the best aid program ever is the eradication of smallpox.Read more at location 642

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The eradication of smallpox is one success story from aid, saving five times as many lives as world peace would have done.Read more at location 651

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In comparison, government departments in the United States will pay for infrastructure to improve safety if doing so costs less than about $7 million per life saved;Read more at location 656

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In the context of helping others, the difference between a good use of money and a great use of money is huge. We shouldn’t just ask: Is this program a good use of money? We need to ask: Is this program the best use of money?Read more at location 707

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Donating to charity is not nearly as glamorous as kicking down the door of a burning building, but the benefits are just as great.Read more at location 739

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Funding seems to be allocated in proportion with how evocative and widely publicized the disaster is, rather than on the basis of its scale and severity.Read more at location 810

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We forget there is an emergency happening all the time, because we’ve grown accustomed to everyday emergencies like disease and poverty and oppression. Because disasters are new and dramatic events, they inspire deeper and more urgent emotions, causing our subconscious to mistakenly assess them as more important or worthy of attention.Read more at location 825

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As we’ve discussed throughout this chapter, this is the wrong calculation to consider when trying to determine how much impact you can have. Instead, young people wanting to make a difference through their careers should determine the marginal value they would provide by becoming a doctor.Read more at location 875

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Greg used statistics to work out the answer. He looked at both how good the quality of health is in many different countries and how many doctors there are in each of those countries, and then plotted the relationship between those two factors (while also taking into account the effect of things like wealth and education). This enabled him to answer his question. He worked out that adding one doctor to the United States adds about four QALYs per year to the population as a whole.Read more at location 896

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What matters is not who does good but whether good is done; and the measure of how much good you achieve is the difference between what happens as a result of your actions and what would have happened anyway.Read more at location 956

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the mistake of neglecting the counterfactual is rife within the world of altruism, and this mistake can have terrible consequences.Read more at location 966

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In a separate study, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated the value for society, per dollar invested, of a range of preventative social policies, such as psychotherapy and anger management. Of the sixty interventions studied, the vast majority were shown to produce more value than they cost. Only three were harmful, and only one of these egregiously so—the Scared Straight program. The researchers concluded that, because Scared Straight was increasing rates of crime, with associated penitentiary costs and costs to the local community, every dollar spent on Scared Straight cost society $203.Read more at location 1001

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I suspect the apparent effectiveness of Scared Straight can be explained by a phenomenon called regression to the mean.Read more at location 1013

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The example of Scared Straight shows the importance of ensuring, wherever possible, that large-scale social programs undergo rigorous testing through controlled trials before they are put into practice. If an amateur chemist created a pill he claimed would reduce crime, we would never administer it to thousands of children without rigorous testing because it would be dangerous, not to mention illegal, to do so. Yet new social programs like Scared Straight can be rolled out without any good evidence behind them. Without rigorous testing, we can’t know if a social program is making things better, making things worse, or achieving nothing at all. Of course, sometimes programs are too small in scale for testing to be a good use of money, and sometimes rigorous trials are impossible. But our default attitude should be that, if a social program is going to be rolled out on a large scale, then it should have been proven to be effective first.Read more at location 1023

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The conventional advice is that if you want to make a difference you should work in the nonprofit or public sector or work in corporate social responsibility. But many people struggle to get a job, let alone find a job in a specific sector. However, many more people have the option to work overtime in order to earn more, or to work harder in order to get a raise or promotion, or to move toward a higher-paying career, or just to live on less. By doing this, and being smart about where you give, almost anyone in rich countries can do a tremendous amount to help others.Read more at location 1086

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Because the social problems in the world are so big, additional resources directed to them diminish in value very slowly.Read more at location 1132

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as we’ve seen, it’s more effective to spend money on malaria treatment than cancer treatment in part because malaria treatment receives a tiny fraction of the resources that cancer treatment receives.Read more at location 1136

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In addition to giving us a way to compare the risks of different activities, the concept of expected value helps us choose which risks are worth taking. Would you be willing to spend an hour on a motorbike if it was perfectly safe but caused you to be unconscious later for three hours and forty-five minutes? If your answer is no, but you’re otherwise happy to ride motorbikes in your day-to-day life, you’re probably not fully appreciating the risk of death.Read more at location 1156

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low-probability high-payoff activities can take priority over sure bets of more modest impact.Read more at location 1169

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Nassim Taleb describes these as Black Swans: very rare events that have a very great impact.)Read more at location 1385

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Many people cannot recognize when their child has a potentially dangerous illness, or do not know what to do about it, so many deaths are due to lack of knowledge rather than lack of healthcare services.Read more at location 1423

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The third organization is GiveDirectly. Its program is simple: it transfers money from donors directly to some of the poorest people in Kenya and Uganda who are then free to use that money however they wish. Using what is called the M-Pesa system, cell phones are used as makeshift bank accounts, thereby enabling an easy transfer of money from foreign bank accounts to the poor. GiveDirectly uses satellite images to find households with thatched roofs (a strong indicator of poverty, compared to iron roofs) and then contacts those households to discuss the program. If the household is willing, GiveDirectly transfers them a lump sum of $1,000, which is equal to a little more than one year’s total income for that household.Read more at location 1427

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Diarrhea is a major problem in the developing world, killing 760,000 children every year, primarily through dehydration. (For comparison, that’s a death toll equivalent to five jumbo jets crashing to the ground every day, killing everyone on board.) A significant number of those deaths could be avoided through simple improvements to sanitation and hygiene, like more regular hand washing with soap.Read more at location 1531

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But when high-quality studies were conducted, microcredit programs were shown to have little or no effect on income, consumption, health, or education. Rather than starting new companies, microloans are typically used to pay for extra consumption like food and healthcare, and the rate of interest on them is usually very high. There’s even concern that they can cause harm by providing a tempting short-term income boost at the expense of longer-term financial security: people take out a loan in order to pay for food or health-care costs of family members but then enter debt that they are unable to repay. The latest evidence suggests that, overall and on average, microlending does have a small positive improvement on people’s lives, but it’s not the panacea that the anecdotes portray.Read more at location 1570

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GiveDirectly even goes so far as to provide information on how many cash transfer recipients reported having to pay bribes to the local agents who transferred them the money (at the time of writing, the figure is 0.4 percent). This sort of admission is very encouraging: showing that the charity cares about identifying and fixing mistakes, rather than brushing them under the rug.Read more at location 1614

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We should certainly feel outrage and horror at the conditions sweatshop laborers toil under. The correct response, however, is not to give up sweatshop-produced goods in favor of domestically produced goods. The correct response is to try to end the extreme poverty that makes sweatshops desirable places to work in the first place.Read more at location 1821

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The Fairtrade label was launched only in 1988, and in 2014, $6.9 billion was spent on Fairtrade-certified products worldwide. The fact that so many people are willing to pay more to ensure that farmers in other countries are paid a fair wage is heartening.Read more at location 1835

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As I mentioned earlier, cutting out meat (especially beef) is one effective way to reduce your carbon emissions. However, we’ve also seen that by donating to Cool Earth you can offset one metric ton of carbon emissions for about five dollars. If you’d rather pay five dollars than go vegetarian, then the environmental argument for vegetarianism is rather weak.Read more at location 1954

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Of all the animals raised for food, broiler chickens, layer hens, and pigs are kept in the worst conditions by a considerable margin.Read more at location 1964

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However, if people hear the environmental or health arguments and then decrease their beef consumption but compensate even a little bit by eating more chicken, those animal-welfare advocates may have caused more animal suffering than they eliminated.Read more at location 1980

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People who had previously purchased a “green” product were significantly more likely to both lie and steal than those who had purchased the conventional product. Their demonstration of ethical behavior subconsciously gave them license to act unethically when the chance arose.Read more at location 2013

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even just saying you’d do something good can cause the moral licensing effect. In another study, half the participants were asked to imagine helping a foreign student who had asked for assistance in understanding a lecture. They subsequently gave significantly less to charity when given the chance to do so than the other half of the participants, who had not been asked to imagine helping another student.Read more at location 2015

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Moral licensing shows that people are often more concerned about looking good or feeling good rather than actually doing good.Read more at location 2018

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Where it becomes crucial, however, is when people are encouraged to do fairly ineffective acts of altruism and, as a result, are less likely to perform effective ones later. If, for example, encouraging someone to buy fair-trade causes that person to devote less time or money to other, more effective activities, then promoting fair-trade might on balance be harmful.Read more at location 2024

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Instead of trying to figure out which career to pursue based on whatever you happen to be most interested in today, you should start by looking for work with certain important features.Read more at location 2087

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It was only once they started to gain traction and success that Jobs’s passion for Apple and computing really bloomed.Read more at location 2109

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For these reasons, especially when starting out, you should focus on building up skills, network, and credentials, rather than trying to have an impact right away.Read more at location 2176

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People often tend to think of choosing a career as an all-or-nothing proposition: a one-off life decision that you make at age twenty-one and that you can’t change later. A way to combat this mistake is to think of career decisions like an entrepreneur would think about starting a company. In both career choice and entrepreneurship, you start out with a tiny amount of relevant information, but you have to use that information to cope with a huge number of variables. Moreover, as things progress, these variables shift: you’re constantly gaining new information; and new, often entirely unexpected, opportunities and problems arise. Because of this, armchair reasoning about what will and won’t happen isn’t very useful.Read more at location 2204

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Ries argues that entrepreneurs should think of their ideas or products like hypotheses, and continually test, ultimately letting the potential customers determine what the product should be.Read more at location 2213

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you should think of your career as a work in progress. Rather than having a fixed career plan, try to have a career “model”—a set of provisional goals and hypotheses that you’re constantly revising as you get new evidence or opportunities. It’s better to have a bad plan than no plan, but only if you’re open to changing it.Read more at location 2219

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In general, jobs that require social skills (like public relations), creativity (like fashion design), or precise perception and manipulation (like boilermaking) are the least likely to become automated. Jobs that require physical proximity or high levels of training are also unlikely to be outsourced.Read more at location 2300

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If there is a large gap between your daily conduct and your core commitment, you will become more like your daily activities and less attached to your original commitment.Read more at location 2309

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incentive facing many academics is work on the most theoretically interesting questions rather than the most socially important questions.Read more at location 2391

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the areas with the greatest potential to do high-impact research while simultaneously gaining career capital that keeps your options open are economics, statistics, computer science, and some areas of psychology.Read more at location 2402

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a Fields Medal—the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics—indicates two things about the recipient: that they were capable of accomplishing something truly important, and that they didn’t.)Read more at location 2414

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we have heard from some nonprofits that the main reason they use volunteers is because those volunteers subsequently donate back to the charity.Read more at location 2435

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Often, people move from high-paying jobs to something that directly makes a difference even though they have limited expertise in the area they move into, when they could have done much more good by keeping their high salary and earning to give.Read more at location 2456

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Eighty-five percent of the global variation in earnings is due to location rather than other factors: the extremely poor are poor simply because they don’t live in an environment that enables them to be productive.Read more at location 2605

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One problem with this approach is that questions of repression and enjoyment are themselves present-minded. They rest upon a contemporary belief—based perhaps on popular conceptions of Freudian thought—that physical sexual pleasure, or satisfaction, is critical to human happiness. They often also assume that sexuality is a fixed essence that resides within the individual and, unless interfered with by society, reaches its proper, fullest expression. This essentialist framework overlooks the different meanings that sexuality may have had in the past and the way it has been historically constructed. It also ignores the many relationships sexuality has to other, nonsexual aspects of culture, especially its grounding in economic change and its role in maintaining systems of social inequality.Read more at location 169

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Yet we cannot fully escape the limits of the field, which has tended to tell us more about women than about men (one of the few areas of history where this is true), more about whites than about other racial groups, and more about the native-born middle class than about the experiences of immigrants and the working class.Read more at location 184

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In mining these materials for clues about the past, we have taken care to separate content from judgments, a risky business to say the least.Read more at location 188

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By the twentieth century, when the individual had replaced the family as the primary economic unit, the tie between sexuality and reproduction weakened further. Influenced by psychology as well as by the growing power of the media, both men and women began to adopt personal happiness as a primary goal of sexual relations.Read more at location 212

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the concept of “dominant sexual meanings” usually refers to the beliefs and experiences of members of the white middle class. Their beliefs were dominant not only in the sense of being widespread, through an expanding published discourse, but also because sexual meanings enforced emerging racial and class hierarchies. Thus European settlers attempted to justify their superiority over native peoples in terms of a need to civilize sexual savages, and whites imposed on blacks an image of a beastlike sexuality to justify both the rape of black women and the lynching of black men. Similarly, portrayals of workers as promiscuous and depraved helped define middle-class moral superiority in the nineteenth century.Read more at location 218

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The media, for instance, are saturated with sexual images that promise free choice but in fact channel individuals toward particular visions of sexual happiness, often closely linked to the purchase of consumer products.Read more at location 243

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when southern whites lynched black men for raping white women, the charges usually stemmed not from any sexual assault, but because of economic and political competition between blacks and whites.Read more at location 279

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most native peoples did not associate either nudity or sexuality with sin. Although sexuality might be embedded within a spiritual context—as in the case of puberty rituals, menstrual seclusion, or the visionary call to cross-dress—sexual intercourse and reproductive functions rarely evoked shame or guilt for Indian men or women. Many native American tribes accepted premarital intercourse, polygamy, or institutionalized homosexuality, all practices proscribed by European church and state. In certain tribes, women, like men, could exercise considerable choice in their selection of sexual partners, and children grew up with few restrictions on sexual experimentation, which might range from masturbation to sexual play between same-sex or opposite-sex partners.Read more at location 406

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One Jesuit missionary told a Montagnais Indian that “it was not honorable for a woman to love any one else except her husband,” for such sexual practices meant that a man “was not sure that his son . . . was his son.” Unmoved by this argument, the man’s reply suggested how larger cultural differences underlay the sexual conflict of Europeans and Indians. “You French people love only your own children,” he explained, “but we all love all the children of our tribe.”Read more at location 423

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Perhaps the most striking contrast between English and Indian sexual systems was the relative absence of sexual conflict among native Americans, due in part to their different cultural attitudes toward both property and sexuality. Indians easily resolved marital discord by simply separating and forming new unions, without penalty, stigma, or property settlements. In cultures in which one could not “own” another person’s sexuality, prostitution—the sale of sex—did not exist prior to the arrival of European settlers. Rape—the theft of sex—only rarely occurred, and it was one of the few sexual acts forbidden by Indian cultures. Contrary to their fears about suffering sexual brutality at the hands of savages, English women captured during the colonial-era Indian wars noted with relief that native American men did not assault them sexually. “I have been in the midst of those roaring lions and savage bears,” wrote Mary Rowlandson about her captivity by New England Indians. “[B]y night and day, alone & in company, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me in word or action.” In contrast, the Spanish settlers justified the rape of Indian women as a right of conquest and expected sexual service from female captives of war. In the South, only in the nineteenth century, after a period of close contact with white settlers, did the Cherokee Nation find it necessary to enact laws punishing rapists.Read more at location 439

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By enacting the death penalty for adultery, sodomy, and rape, the colony of Massachusetts Bay equated these acts with other capital offenses such as treason, murder, and witchcraft.Read more at location 510

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seventeenth-century New England, for example, one-third of the victims of rape were female servants, a group that comprised only ten percent of the area’s population.Read more at location 530

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In Connecticut, for example, a man confessed to having had sexual relations with a variety of animals since the age of ten; Massachusetts executed several teenage boys for buggery. Sexual relations with animals required harsh punishment, for colonists believed that these unions could have reproductive consequences. The mating of humans and animals, they feared, would produce monstrous offspring. For this reason, colonists insisted on punishing not only the man but also the beast, who might bear such monsters.Read more at location 618

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In the colonial system of courtship, parents did not arrange marriages. Nonetheless, parental opinion played a large role in the selection or approval of a future spouse, for as long as sons expected to inherit land from their fathers, they tended to heed parental advice.Read more at location 713

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The need to produce children, along with the risk that a child would not live to adulthood, required that married women endure repeated pregnancies. In addition to the risk of death in childbirth—which in some regions of the colonies accounted for as many as twenty percent of maternal deaths—the physical labors of pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing preoccupied married women.Read more at location 815

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The regulation of deviance served the larger function of reminding the community at large that sexuality belonged within marriage, for the purpose of producing legitimate children.Read more at location 868

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The gender of offenders shaped the treatment of deviance. Sodomy and rape were men’s crimes. Although adultery, fornication, and bastardy involved couples, women in both northern and southern colonies were more likely than men to be prosecuted and convicted for these sexual offenses.36 The fact that pregnancy made a woman’s participation in these acts apparent helps account for the disparity. In addition, Western culture had traditionally feared the sexual voraciousness of women. As the “weaker vessell,” woman supposedly had less mastery over her passions and had to be carefully controlled.Read more at location 869

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As in other morals cases, the higher the status of the accused, the less likely was severe punishment. Despite his thirty-year history of attempted sodomy with servants and neighbors, the wealthy Nicholas Sension of Connecticut merely had his estate held as bond to insure his future good behavior.Read more at location 929

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That Massachusetts courts were more likely to convict when a child or a married woman had been raped suggests that single, adult women were often perceived as willing sexual partners. The rape of a daughter or wife could be seen as an attack on the “property” of a father or husband, rather than a crime against the woman herself. Indeed, the death penalty for rape applied only if a woman was married, engaged, or under the age of ten.Read more at location 949

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The disposition of rape cases depended strongly upon the status of both victim and assailant. Men of higher social standing—farm owners and artisans, for example—were less likely to be brought to trial for rape or attempted rape, while lower-class and nonwhite men accused of rape could expect harsher treatment by the courts. In 1685, a servant convicted of attempted rape upon a married woman received the severe punishment of thirty-five lashes. In eighteenth-century Massachusetts, three of the five executions for rape involved blacks or Indians, even though nonwhite men represented only fourteen percent of those accused of rape. The other two executed were white laborers.48 The harshest penalties for sexual assault applied to blacks who attacked white women. In New York, a free black convicted of two attempted rapes of white women was burned alive. Another free black in Virginia received twenty-nine lashes, an hour in the pillory, and a sentence of temporary servitude for attempted assault on a seven-year-old white girl. In several colonies, the laws prescribed castration for blacks who attempted to rape white women.Read more at location 953

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Neighbors were especially important as witnesses in rape cases, for it was incumbent upon the victim to call out in order to notify others of an attack; otherwise, the court might consider her a willing partner. When Elizabeth Goodell of Salem accused her brother-in-law of frequent “assaults” and “affronts,” her neighbors stated that she should have called out for help. Even nine-year-old Ruth Parsons testified that she had cried out when Edward Sanders forcibly abused her by “enteringe her body with his pisseinge place (as shee called it),” but no one was near the house to hear her, except “little children wch he put out of doores.”50 In some cases, women were punished for not having called out when assaulted. When a victim of unwanted sexual advances was afraid to call out or press charges, neighbors might step in to bring the case to light. The testimony of other members of the community was also important in determining whether a rape had actually occurred.Read more at location 961

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In order to establish paternity, midwives questioned an unmarried woman during labor, “the time of her travell [travail],” when they believed she would be incapable of lying about the father’s identity.Read more at location 975

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In many areas of the South, the white sex ratio remained so unbalanced that white men sometimes sought black mates in the absence of white women. By the late seventeenth century, however, the white sex ratio began to even out. More importantly, large numbers of Africans were being imported as slaves, and slavery began to supplant indentured servitude as the major source of labor. Colonial assemblies soon enacted an array of statutes—including laws punishing interracial sexual relations—to strengthen the race line by reinforcing the unequal status of blacks and whites.Read more at location 1034

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As with native American Indians, sexual stereotyping provided one means by which the English colonists justified their domination of Africans. English colonists brought to America a set of stereotypes that differentiated Europeans from Africans by assigning to the latter a sexual nature that was more sensual, aggressive, and beastlike than that of whites. Influenced by the Elizabethan image of “the lusty Moor,” colonists accepted the notion that Africans were “lewd, lascivious and wanton people.” With the growing reliance on slavery, colonists drew upon these English stereotypes to help justify their economic and social control of blacks. Not only their dark color, but also their allegedly animal-like sexuality, whites argued, proved that blacks were of a different breed than whites; it was thus “natural” that the two races should not mix, and that whites should dominate blacks. Throughout the American colonies, a caste system based on race took hold by the eighteenth century. From New Englander Samuel Sewall to Virginian Thomas Jefferson, white colonists, regardless of their views on slavery, opposed interracial mixing. But in the southern colonies, where slavery grew in economic importance, the racial boundary became more deeply institutionalized.63 Individuals who transgressed this racial boundary challenged not only a set of cultural values but also the basis of an emerging system of racial control.Read more at location 1038

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Discriminatory treatment of interracial children further supported the institution of slavery. Delaware enacted heavier fines in interracial than white bastardy cases, and the 1664 Maryland anti-miscegenation law defined the children of mixed marriages as slaves. In most colonies, bastard children of mixed unions had to spend up to thirty-one years in servitude.Read more at location 1056

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Probably the rarest form of interracial union, but the most symbolically charged, was the rape of a white woman by a black man. So frightening was the specter of this inversion of the racial hierarchy that colonial legislatures devised a uniquely American criminal penalty, castration, as a means of deterrence. Laws in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia allowed castration for blacks who attempted to rape white women. Even when this literally emasculating punishment was dropped from other criminal codes, it could still be applied in cases of assaults on white women by slaves. That assaults on black women provoked no such reaction confirms the racial character of this legislation. At least one eighteenth-century Virginia slave was formally sentenced to castration. Blacks convicted of rape were usually hanged.67 Nonetheless, the law set a precedent that could be followed by extralegal means. Thus in 1718, when a white man in Connecticut observed a black man lying with a white woman, he attacked the black and castrated him. Whites particularly feared that when slaves revolted against their masters, as they did on several occasions during the eighteenth century, the men would assault white women to retaliate for white assaults on black women. However, there is no evidence that black men sexually assaulted white women during the slave uprisings of the colonial period.Read more at location 1074

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After talking about it, however, Alvy and I decided to do the opposite—to share our work with the outside world. My view was that we were all so far from achieving our goal that to hoard ideas only impeded our ability to get to the finish line. Instead, NYIT engaged with the computer graphics community, publishing everything we discovered,Read more at location 476

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Without hesitation, I rattled off the names of several people who were doing impressive work in a variety of technical areas. My willingness to do this reflected my world-view, forged in academia, that any hard problem should have many good minds simultaneously trying to solve it. Not to acknowledge that seemed silly.Read more at location 503

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It wasn’t just that the animation process was labor-intensive, though it surely was; it was that we were inventing the animation process as we went along.Read more at location 649

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For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.Read more at location 666

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I remember being struck by this clash-of-the-titans moment. I was amused by the fact that each man could see ego in the other but not in himself.Read more at location 744

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At precisely 10 A.M., Steve looked around and, finding the CFO missing, started the meeting without him! In one swift move, Steve had not only foiled the CFO’s attempt to place himself atop the pecking order, but he had grabbed control of the meeting.Read more at location 761

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simple answers like the “start high” pricing advice—so seductive in its rationality—had distracted me and kept me from asking more fundamental questions.Read more at location 820

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Deming’s approach—and Toyota’s, too—gave ownership of and responsibility for a product’s quality to the people who were most involved in its creation. Instead of merely repeating an action, workers could suggest changes, call out problems, and—this next element seemed particularly important to me—feel the pride that came when they helped fix what was broken. This resulted in continuous improvement, driving out flaws and improving quality. In other words, the Japanese assembly line became a place where workers’ engagement strengthened the resulting product.Read more at location 850

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You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility.Read more at location 862

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How would we resolve conflicts? And his answer, which I found comically egotistical at the time, was that he simply would continue to explain why he was right until I understood. The irony was that this soon became the technique I used with Steve. When we disagreed, I would state my case, but since Steve could think much faster than I could, he would often shoot down my arguments. So I’d wait a week, marshal my thoughts, and then come back and explain it again. He might dismiss my points again, but I would keep coming back until one of three things happened: (1) He would say “Oh, okay, I get it” and give me what I needed; (2) I’d see that he was right and stop lobbying; or (3) our debate would be inconclusive, in which case I’d just go ahead and do what I had proposed in the first place. Each outcome was equally likely, but when this third option occurred, Steve never questioned me. For all his insistence, he respected passion. If I believed in something that strongly, he seemed to feel, it couldn’t be all wrong.Read more at location 913

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since we were using computer animation, there was no one to ask for help.Read more at location 940

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The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realized that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what’s bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers.Read more at location 1044

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The crew assigned to work on Toy Story 2 was not interested in producing B-level work, and more than a few came into my office to say so. It would have been foolish to ignore their passion.Read more at location 1110

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Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it. A good team is made up of people who complement each other. There is an important principle here that may seem obvious, yet—in my experience—is not obvious at all. Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.Read more at location 1218

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(Statisticians will tell you that when you get a perfect split like this, it doesn’t mean that half know the right answer—it means that they are all guessing, picking at random, as if flipping a coin.)Read more at location 1227

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Find, develop, and support good people, and they in turn will find, develop, and own good ideas.Read more at location 1243

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Imagine an old, heavy suitcase whose well-worn handles are hanging by a few threads. The handle is “Trust the Process” or “Story Is King”—a pithy statement that seems, on the face of it, to stand for so much more. The suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase: the experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often, we grab the handle and—without realizing it—walk off without the suitcase. What’s more, we don’t even think about what we’ve left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase.Read more at location 1299

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Words like quality and excellence are misapplied so relentlessly that they border on meaningless.Read more at location 1306

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To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent.Read more at location 1309

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“Get a bike that’s as low to the ground as you can find, put on elbow and knee pads so you’re not afraid of falling, and go,” he says.Read more at location 1721

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Part of the answer is simple: If we as leaders can talk about our mistakes and our part in them, then we make it safe for others. You don’t run from it or pretend it doesn’t exist. That is why I make a point of being open about our meltdowns inside Pixar, because I believe they teach us something important: Being open about problems is the first step toward learning from them. My goal is not to drive fear out completely, because fear is inevitable in high-stakes situations. What I want to do is loosen its grip on us. While we don’t want too many failures, we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.Read more at location 1753

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For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.Read more at location 1804

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He told me that he thinks he and the other proven directors have a responsibility to be teachers—that this should be a central part of their jobs, even as they continue to make their own films.Read more at location 1934

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Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along—the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective—the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult’s.Read more at location 185

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The highest praise I ever received for a book of mine was when the school librarian at Farrer Junior High in Provo, Utah, told me, “You know, Ender’s Game is our most-lost book.”Read more at location 195

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we are very intellectually oriented and have found few people at home who share this trait. Hence, most of us are very lonely, and have been since kindergarten. When teachers continually compliment you, your chances of “fitting in” are about nil.Read more at location 202

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Ender doodled on his desk, drawing contour maps of mountainous islands and then telling his desk to display them in three dimensions from every angle.Read more at location 352

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Ender smiled. He was the one who had figured out how to send messages and make them march—even as his secret enemy called him names, the method of delivery praised him.Read more at location 358

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have to win this now, and for all time, or I’ll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse.Read more at location 397

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“Packed head, Ender,” Alai said. It was high praise.Read more at location 1273

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He could see Bonzo’s anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender’s anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo’s was hot, and so it used him.Read more at location 1742

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What have I learned so far? Ender listed things in his mind as he undressed by his bunk. The enemy’s gate is down. Use my legs as a shield in battle. A small reserve, held back until the end of the game, can be decisive. And soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they’ve been given.Read more at location 1872

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“Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.”Read more at location 1982

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“Listen to them,” Ender said to the other boys. “Remember the words. If you ever want to make your enemy crazy, shout that kind of stuff at them. It makes them do dumb things, to be mad. But we don’t get mad.”Read more at location 2180

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Peter loved to learn, all right, but the teachers hadn’t taught him anything, ever. He did his learning through his desk at home, tapping into libraries and databases, studying and thinking and, above all, talking to Valentine. Yet at school he acted as though he were excited about the puerile lesson of the day. Oh, wow, I never knew that frogs looked like this inside, he’d say, and then at home he studied the binding of cells into organisms through the philotic collation of DNA. Peter was a master of flattery, and all his teachers bought it.Read more at location 2351

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Ender liked having the announcement of the extra fifteen minutes come from the toon leaders. Let the boys learn that leniency comes from their toon leaders, and harshness from their commander—it will bind them better in the small, tight knots of this fabric.Read more at location 3305

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The soldiers knew by now that Ender could be brutal in the way he talked to groups, but when he worked with an individual he was always patient, explaining as often as necessary, making suggestions quietly, listening to questions and problems and explanations.Read more at location 3325

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Carn Carby left, and Ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.Read more at location 3371

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“Do not be disingenuous with me, Colonel Graff. Americans are quite apt at playing stupid when they choose to, but I am not to be deceived. You know why I am here.”Read more at location 3626

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“Oh, I did,” said Slattery. He grinned. “I’m only fair-minded before and after battles.”Read more at location 3742

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Ender insisted that his conversation with you should not be bugged. I promised him it wouldn’t be, and to help inspire confidence, the two of you are going out on a raft he built himself.Read more at location 4190

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Time passed without touching Ender, except with glancing blows.Read more at location 5336

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“Everybody’s OK now,” said Dink. “Nothing was wrong with any of us that five days of cowering in blacked-out rooms in the middle of a war couldn’t cure.”Read more at location 5402

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When in a novel I come to a physical description of, say, a room with a desk here, a bed there, a window, a nightstand, my mind’s eye just glazes over. Asking for directions in the street, the person with ADD loses track by the time his informant is halfway through her first sentence. Fortunately, he has perfected the art of nodding. Ashamed to admit his lack of comprehension and knowing the futility of asking for clarifications that he would grasp with no greater success, he gives a masterful impersonation of one who understands. Then he heads off, entrusting himself to good fortune.Read more at location 310

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Some adults with ADD have told me that they speak so quickly partly because so many words and phrases tumble into their minds that they fear forgetting the most important ones unless they release them at a fast rate.Read more at location 348

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As long ago as 1934, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine identified a distressing quality to some people’s lives, which the authors called “organic drivenness.” I, for one, have rarely had a moment’s relaxation without the immediate and troubling feeling that I ought to be doing something else instead. Like father, like son. At the age of eight or nine, my son said to me, “I always think I should be doing something, but I don’t know what it is.”Read more at location 353

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An adult with ADD looks back on his life to see countless plans never fully realized and intentions unfulfilled. “I am a person of permanent potential,” one patient said. Surges of initial enthusiasm quickly ebb. People report unfinished retainer walls begun over a decade ago, partly constructed boats taking up garage space year after year, courses begun and quit, books half read, business ventures forsaken, stories or poetry unwritten—many, many roads not traveled.Read more at location 384

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Although poor social skills generally accompany ADD, this is not universal. One type of ADD child is socially adept and wildly popular. In my experience, such success hides a lack of confidence in important areas of functioning and masks a very fragile self-esteem, but this may not emerge until these children grow into their late teens or early twenties.Read more at location 392

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Many are recognizable by their compulsive joking, their pressured, rapid-fire speech, by their seemingly random and aimless hopping from one topic to the next and by their inability to express an idea without exhausting the English vocabulary.Read more at location 395

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Men and women with ADD have about them an almost palpable intensity that other people respond to with unease and instinctive withdrawal.Read more at location 398

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“I don’t know how to make small talk, or I’m afraid of saying something stupid,” a twenty-six-year-old woman said. And the truth is, when the ADD adult does join conversations, she often finds herself bored by the minute attention others devote to subjects that to her seem to skim only the surface.Read more at location 405

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Given what we know now—and given also what we don’t know—the only test of any explanation for attention deficit disorder is whether it makes sense in the light of people’s experience and the available research facts, and whether it can be used productively to help people.Read more at location 479

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This feeling of duty toward the whole world is not limited to ADD but is typical of it. No one with ADD is without it.Read more at location 530

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There was also what I call the “weekend despair” of the driven personality. On Saturday mornings, there would be a crash. I was enveloped in a kind of enervated lethargy, hiding behind a book or a newspaper or staring morosely out the window. I was not only fatigued from the whirlwind week, but I did not know what to do with myself. Without the weekday adrenaline rush, I felt a lack of focus, purpose, energy. I was depleted and irritable, neither active nor able to rest.Read more at location 547

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Genes can be activated or turned off by factors in the environment. In the Cree population of northwestern Ontario, for example, diabetes is found at a rate five times the Canadian national average, despite the traditionally low incidence of diabetes among native peoples. The genetic makeup of the Cree people cannot have changed in a few generations. The destruction of the Crees’ traditional physically active ways of life, the substitution of high-calorie diets for their previous low-fat, low-carbohydrate eating patterns and greatly increased stress levels are responsible for the alarming rise in diabetes rates.Read more at location 758

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It is also a fact, as a number of adoptive mothers have told me, that even when a newborn adopted at birth is welcomed into a family with the greatest joy and goodwill, some time may have to pass before the truly symbiotic, two-way, physiologically and emotionally attuned relationship is established between mother and infant. Everything being equal, this process is smoother when the mother has herself carried the child within her body for nine months.Read more at location 791

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Stress on the mother during pregnancy can unbalance the levels of hormones in her body, particularly of the stress hormone cortisol (cortisone). Both during and after intrauterine life, cortisol directly affects the developing nervous system. The vast majority of pregnancies ending in adoption occur in mothers under severe stress.Read more at location 795

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For such reasons, we can expect all adopted children to be at unusually high risk for psychological problems in general, ADD in particular, without any recourse to genetic explanations. Such is the case. Any health professional working with ADD cases is struck by the large proportion of clients, children or adults, who were adopted in early childhood. A 1982 study found that “the rate of adoption among ADD patients in the clinical population was 8 to 16 times the prevalence of adopted children in the population at large.”4 If you have ADD, you have a far higher than average chance of having been adopted.Read more at location 800

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A view of ADD that recognizes the importance of the environment is inherently optimistic. If environmental causes are largely responsible for a problem, perhaps environmental approaches can be employed to help resolve it. When we come to the chapters dealing with the treatment of attention deficit disorder, we will see that long-term positive changes are indeed possible, based on changing the environments of children, and even of adults.Read more at location 813

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They may live in the same house, eat the same kinds of food, partake in many of the same activities. These are environments of secondary importance. Of all environments, the one that most profoundly shapes the human personality is the invisible one: the emotional atmosphere in which the child lives during the critical early years of brain development. The invisible environment has little to do with parenting philosophies or parenting style. It is a matter of intangibles, foremost among them being the parents’ relationship with each other and their emotional balance as individuals.Read more at location 848

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A hidden factor of great importance is a parent’s unconscious attitude toward a child: what, or whom, on the deepest level, the child represents for the parents; the degree to which the parents see themselves in the child; the needs parents may have that they subliminally hope the child will meet.Read more at location 855

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For the infant there exists no abstract, “out-there” reality. The emotional milieu with which we surround the child is the world as he experiences it. In the words of the child psychiatrist and researcher Margaret Mahler, for the newborn, the parent is “the principal representative of the world.”Read more at location 857

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Sensitivity is affected by emotional states. People’s pain tolerance is lower when they feel anxious or depressed, partly because of changes in stress hormone levels and in the levels of endorphins, the body’s innate painkillers.Read more at location 929

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Sensitive children come to be called “difficult” because adults have trouble understanding their temperament and because parenting methods that work with other children are frustratingly inadequate with this group. Like the related phrase “terrible twos,” “difficult child” shows grown-up bias. In the child’s experience, it is the adult who is ornery. Were children the arbiters of language, we would hear of the “difficult parent” and the “terrible thirties.”Read more at location 931

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My wife and I learned to recognize our daughter’s moods and behaviors as real-time, instantaneous computer printouts of the psychological atmosphere in our home. If we wanted to know how we were doing as individuals or as a couple, we needed only check the facial expressions and emotional responses of our daughter. What was recorded there did not always reassure us. Abdominal cramps in sensitive children are often clues to unresolved tensions in the family environment. They are common and all too frequently misinterpreted. These are the children who go pale with “inexplicable” tummy aches and are dragged from doctor to doctor, from clinic to emergency ward, from specialist to specialist, subjected to examinations, tests, X-rays and over and over again are pronounced “perfectly healthy.” The parents are assured there is no reason for the pain. There is reason. Their child’s body is a barometer for the stresses on the whole family system, his symptoms the markings on a minutely calibrated instrument.Read more at location 944

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Even though fully half of the roughly hundred thousand genes in the human organism are dedicated to the central nervous system, the genetic code simply cannot carry enough information to predetermine the infinite number of potential brain circuits. For this reason alone, biological heredity could not by itself account for the densely intertwined psychology and neurophysiology of attention deficit disorder.Read more at location 976

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In large part, each infant’s individual experiences in the early years determine which brain structures will develop and how well, and which nerve centers will be connected with which other nerve centers, and establish the networks controlling behavior.Read more at location 986

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Attention deficit disorder results from the miswiring of brain circuits, in susceptible infants, during this crucial period of growth.Read more at location 990

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To accommodate our upright stance, the human pelvis had to narrow, so growth inside the womb longer than nine months would have resulted in infants too large to be born safely. Already at the end of the nine months of human gestation, the head is the largest part of the body, the one most likely to get stuck in our journey through the birth canal. The bargain forced on our evolutionary ancestors was that the tremendously large human brain has to develop outside the relatively safe environment of the womb, highly vulnerable to potentially adverse circumstances.Read more at location 1004

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Neural Darwinism means that our genetic potential for brain development can find its full expression only if circumstances are favorable. To understand this, we need only imagine an infant kept in a dark room, held, physically cared for and fed, but never spoken to. After a year of such deprivation, the brain of this infant would not be comparable to those of other infants, no matter what her inherited potential. Despite perfectly good eyes at birth and healthy nerves to conduct visual images to the brain, the thirty or so neurological units that together make up visual sense would not develop. Even the neurological components of vision present at birth would atrophy and become useless if this child never saw light for about five years. Irreversible blindness would be the result. If we surrounded the child with silence for the first ten years, he would never be able to learn human speech.Read more at location 1015

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From early infancy, it appears that our ability to regulate emotional states depends upon the experience of feeling that a significant person in our life is simultaneously experiencing a similar state of mind.Read more at location 1050

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In addition to EEG changes, infants of depressed mothers exhibit decreased activity levels, gaze aversion, less positive emotion and greater irritability.Read more at location 1092

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The attunement process is far too subtle to be maintained by a simple act of will on the part of the parent. Infants, particularly sensitive infants, intuit the difference between a parent’s real psychological states and her attempts to soothe and protect the infant by means of feigned emotional expressions. A loving parent who is feeling depressed or anxious may try to hide that fact from the infant, but the effort is futile. In fact, it is much easier to fool an adult with forced emotion than a baby. The emotional sensory radar of the infant has not yet been scrambled. It reads feelings clearly. They cannot be hidden from the infant behind a screen of words, or camouflaged by well-meant but forced gestures. It is unfortunate but true that we grow far more stupid than that by the time we reach adulthood.Read more at location 1116

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The tense or depressed mothering adult will not be able to accompany the infant into relaxed, happy spaces.Read more at location 1126

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The ADD child’s difficulty reading social cues likely originates from her relationship cues not being read by the nurturing adult, who was distracted by stress.Read more at location 1128

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In the attunement interaction, not only does the mother follow the child, but she also permits the child to temporarily interrupt contact. When the interaction reaches a certain stage of intensity for the infant, he will look away to avoid an uncomfortably high level of arousal. Another interaction will then begin. A mother who is anxious may react with alarm when the infant breaks off contact, may try to stimulate him, to draw him back into the interaction. Then the infant’s nervous system is not allowed to “cool down,” and the attunement relationship is hampered. Infants whose caregivers were too stressed, for whatever reason, to give them the necessary attunement contact will grow up with a chronic tendency to feel alone with their emotions, to have a sense—rightly or wrongly—that no one can share how they feel, that no one can “understand.”Read more at location 1129

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Interference with the conditions required for the healthy development of the prefrontal cortex, I believe, accounts for virtually all cases of ADD.Read more at location 1203

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Conversely, in animal studies, chronically high levels of stress hormones such as cortisol have been shown to cause important brain centers to shrink.Read more at location 1208

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From animal studies, we know that social stimulation is necessary for the growth of the nerve endings that release dopamine and for the growth of receptors that dopamine needs to bind to in order to do its work. In four-month-old monkeys, major alterations of dopamine and other neurotransmitter systems were found after only six days of separation from their mothers.Read more at location 1237

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A neuroscientific study published in 1998 showed that adult rats whose mothers had given them more licking, grooming and other physical-emotional contact during infancy had more efficient brain circuitry for reducing anxiety, as well as more receptors on nerve cells for the brain’s own natural tranquilizing chemicals.Read more at location 1242

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People can be deeply affected by unconscious anxieties and stresses they have no conscious knowledge of whatsoever. (This is often my impression, for example, whenever I meet anyone who tells me that they are a “happy person” or who says that “I believe in thinking positively.”)Read more at location 1380

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That would have taken an emotional toll on her, I offered, even if she wasn’t aware of it—and the fact that she was not aware of her mothering role toward him meant that she, too, must have carried within her the traces of painful childhood experiences. Somehow, early in her life, she must have learned to repress her own needs in order to serve the needs of others.Read more at location 1391

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Only people abused in their youth will go on to abuse their own children—and they will do so almost inevitably unless they have recognized the facts of their own childhood histories and have taken up the task of healing.Read more at location 1472

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Since a child cannot possibly be up to the task of taking care of a self-destructive adult, one given such responsibility inevitably develops a profound sense of inadequacy.Read more at location 1492

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ADD children are far more likely than other children to have parents who have suffered major depression, about 30 percent compared with 6 percent.3 That figure would be even higher, I believe, were it to include the many people whose depression never reaches a diagnosed clinical state but who live their lives in the grip of low moods and irritability that seem normal to them.Read more at location 1497

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There is a telling bit of research evidence that deserves more attention than it has received: parents of ADD children report fewer contacts with their extended families, “and when such contacts occur, report them to be less helpful.”4 Parents of ADD children, in other words, seem to be relatively alienated from their own families of origin.Read more at location 1516

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The people who founded our country, and continued to populate it over time, were just the types of people who might have had ADD. They did not like to sit still. They had to be willing to take an enormous risk in boarding a ship and crossing the ocean, leaving their homes behind; they were action-oriented, independent, wanting to get away from the old ways... The higher prevalence of ADD in our current society may be due to its higher prevalence among those who settled America.Read more at location 1550

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The greater prevalence of ADD in North America is rooted in something more prosaic and more disturbing than genes from adventuresome forebears: the gradual destruction of the family by economic and social pressures in the past several decades. This process is more advanced in North America than elsewhere in the industrialized world.Read more at location 1563

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Bly notes in The Sibling Society that “in 1935 the average working man had forty hours a week free, including Saturday. By 1990, it was down to seventeen hours. The twenty-three lost hours of free time a week since 1935 are the very hours in which the father could be a nurturing father, and find some center in himself, and the very hours in which the mother could feel she actually has a husband.” These patterns characterize not only the early years of parenting, but entire childhoods. “Family meals, talks, reading together no longer take place,” writes Bly. “What the young need—stability, presence, attention, advice, good psychic food, unpolluted stories—is exactly what the sibling society won’t give them.”Read more at location 1583

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The answer to the need of the young child for close parental contact is not the ghettoization of women in the home. It is the recognition by society at large that there is no more important task in the world than the nurturing of the young during the earliest years. From the strict financial point of view alone, the benefits to society would be enormous if this were accepted—so much costly social dysfunction would be prevented, so many productive and creative forces allowed to unfold.Read more at location 1609

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Episodic experiences of a distressing nature do not induce dissociation, but chronic distress does—the distress of the sensitive infant with unsatisfied attunement needs, for example.Read more at location 1684

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Once a circuit is established, signals will travel along it much more easily than along alternative routes, in a manner analogous to the ease of walking along a beaten path rather than through grass or bush on either side of it, or water flowing in a channel instead of across flat ground. If we want the stream to run in a different direction, we will have to create new courses for it.Read more at location 1701

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Given their automatic tuning out, ADD children forever find themselves being told to “pay attention”—a demand that completely misunderstands both the nature of the child and the nature of attention. The obvious monetary connotation of “pay” is that attention is something the child owes the adult, that the child’s attention belongs to the adult by right. The phrase takes for granted that being attentive is always a consciously chosen act, subject to one’s will. Both of these assumptions are faulty.Read more at location 1704

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Attention and emotional security remain intertwined throughout childhood. What looks like a deficit of attention may be a preoccupation with something important to the child but hidden to the observing adult: the child’s emotional anxieties. The classroom behavior of ADD children, to give a common example, is frequently said to be disruptive. They seem to have more interest in interacting with their peers than in the material the teacher would have them study—which may simply mean that they are obsessed with trying to get their relationship needs met. If they tend not to do this very successfully, they do it all the more desperately. Their brain’s attentional system cannot switch into “schoolwork mode” when it is consumed by anxieties about the child’s emotional connection with the world.Read more at location 1779

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The tummy aches of the sensitive child are muscle cramps caused by autonomic signals, triggered by unconscious fears and tensions.Read more at location 1838

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John Ratey has aptly observed that “I’m sorry” is the most common phrase in the vocabulary of attention deficit disorder.Read more at location 1923

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Most encouraging was Dr. Diamond’s finding that even the brains of animals deprived before birth, or deliberately damaged in infancy, were able to compensate by structural changes in response to enriched living conditions. “Thus,” she writes, “we must not give up on people who begin life under unfavorable conditions.Read more at location 1970

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Early in life, plasticity, the responsiveness of the human brain to changing conditions, is so great that infants who suffer damage to one side of their brain about the time of birth, even if they lose an entire hemisphere, may compensate for the deficit.Read more at location 1978

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According to Carl Rogers, the healing process relies on the basic trustworthiness of human nature.Read more at location 2008

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The unfortunate “time-out” technique of disciplining is an archetypical example of how opting for the short-term goal can harm attachment and therefore be ruinous to the long-term objective. In “time out” the small child is sent to his room or otherwise banished from contact with the parent for varying periods of time, and is supposed thereby to learn the difference between good and bad behavior. That is not what they learn. Time out requires raising as a threat the worst nightmare a young child can have—being cut off from the parent. Whatever the parent intends, the message received by the child is If you do not do as I want you to do, if you displease me, I am quite ready to sever the relationship with you. I only want you around on my terms. Time out may achieve its immediate goal, especially with a young child already anxious about his attachment with the parent and thus inclined to please. The effect, however, is to increase the child’s anxiety and, deep down, the child’s rage as well. Anxiety will diminish the child’s capacity to develop self-regulation. There is, too, the danger that eventually, when he is no longer so dependent on the parent—in adolescence, for example—the child will detach from the relationship. The only justifiable use for this method is to help a parent who feels out of control to collect himself before pursuing further interaction with the child. In this case, the child is not being blamed or threatened.Read more at location 2046

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When in doubt, it is best to bite the parental tongue rather than to utter a critical comment. At all times, the child must sense that the parent’s acceptance of him does not depend on how well he does something. It is not threatened by poor performance. It is unconditional.Read more at location 2172

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Too much praise can be almost as harmful as too much criticism. They seem opposite, but the underlying message is the same: the parent puts a high value not on who the child is, but on what he does. This is why many ADD children, no matter how much they crave and court attention, are uncomfortable with praise. Nature’s own agenda is hindered when parents foster what the developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld calls acquired self-esteem, that based on external evaluations. “We don’t want to build a child’s self-esteem on how pretty they are, how popular they are, how smart they are, how good they are in baseball, how well they do in school,” he says. “There is a much, much truer, more solid type of self-esteem we can provide for our children than something that just follows cultural trends and approximates cultural norms. We should avoid making children believe that these things influence how we feel about them.” The parent acknowledges warmly when the child does something well or achieves a new milestone but makes his comments about the deed rather than about the child, about the effort rather than about the result. And he refers to the child’s own emotions. “You really worked hard on that. Good for you. You stuck with it even though it was difficult.” How the child feels about what he does is far more important than what the parent thinks about it. A positive evaluation by the parent is still an evaluation, a judgment. It leaves a question: how would they feel about me if they could not judge me favorably? People do not need judgments—they need acceptance.Read more at location 2181

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To try to teach a child any useful lessons when cold anger seizes hold is self-defeating. In the biochemical soup of stress and shame, no learning can take place. The child’s nervous system is simply not receptive; it is too concerned with survival. At best, the child adopts techniques to avoid the parent’s rage.Read more at location 2211

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The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting “forgiveness.” There is neither genuine remorse nor genuine forgiveness in such situations, only humiliation. Since in principle nothing the child does should threaten the relationship in the first place, he should have to do no work to restore it.Read more at location 2222

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At no time in life do behaviors reflect a relationship with significant others more closely than in childhood, because at no time in life are people as emotionally and physically dependent on others. We think that children act, whereas what they mostly do is react. Parents who realize this acquire a powerful tool. By noticing their own responses to the child, rather than fixating on the child’s responses to them, they free up tremendous energy for growth.Read more at location 2243

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As we have said, self-regulation is the goal of development; the lack of it is the fundamental impairment in ADD. One way of describing self-regulation is to say that it is the ability to maintain the internal environment within a functional and safe range, regardless of external circumstance. On the emotional level, the self-regulation of moods means that neither despondency nor uncontrolled exuberance, neither passive submission nor blind rage, control the mind. A person can experience frustration, disappointment or sadness without being seized by despair. Happiness does not need to be euphoria or anger hostility. Moods are not controlled by the vagaries of external events or by the moods of others.Read more at location 2251

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If the child knows that the parent is okay even if the child is not okay, he feels safer.Read more at location 2317

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Unresolved psychological conflicts between the parents, and within each parent individually, are a major source of unrest for the hypersensitive ADD child. This anxiety absorbed by sensitive children will lead to hyperactivity or other ADD-related behaviors.Read more at location 2333

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Dr. Freeman defines unfinished business as “a present emotional reaction shaped by a past experience. It is a reactive response guided by strong emotional feelings based on past experiences of anxiety.... Behaviour on the part of our spouse or children that appears critical, distant, or unloving will trigger anxiety and doubt in us and block our ability to be loving and nurturing,” writes Dr. Freeman.Read more at location 2341

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If parents are to foster individuation in their children, they must also work on their own maturation. Try as they might, poorly individuated parents cannot successfully foster individuation in their children. They are likely to have unsatisfactory relationships with their partners, especially after children begin arriving to upset the fragile emotional balance between them. They are also likely to fuse emotionally with one or another of their children. There may be the semblance of a close relationship between parent and child, but in reality the child’s individuation is hindered, as he grows up feeling automatically responsible for the parent’s feeling states. Later the child will harbor a sense of responsibility for the whole world. Even what can be seen as selfish behaviors represent nothing more than unconscious and desperate efforts to throw off that sense of overwhelming responsibility.Read more at location 2354

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The child who seeks constant attention is, of necessity, an unhappy child. He feels that unless he gets attention he is worthless, has no place. He seeks constant reassurance that he is important. Since he doubts this, no amount of reassurance will ever impress him.Read more at location 2401

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There is no more common disparagement of the ADD child than that she is “just looking for attention,” a phrase one hears from many an exasperated parent and teacher.Read more at location 2409

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The child with ADD has had to pay out more attention than she has received, which is precisely how she has incurred an attention deficit.Read more at location 2414

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The attitude adults are best to adopt when it comes to dealing with the distressing behaviors of the ADD child is one of compassionate curiosity. The compassion is for the child who, beneath the surface of what so often is seen only as obnoxious behavior, is anxious and is hurting emotionally. The curiosity, if genuine and open-minded, leads us to consider exactly what message the child may be trying to communicate to us by a particular behavior, even more unbeknownst to herself than to us.Read more at location 2422

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The hunger is eased by the parent’s seizing every possible opportunity to devote positive attention to the child precisely when the child has not demanded it.Read more at location 2438

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Research shows that many parents spend virtually no more than five minutes, if that, of meaningful contact with their child each day.Read more at location 2463

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It is a mistake many of us make in our relationships with others, whether children or spouses, acquaintances or strangers, to imagine that we know the intentions behind the actions of others. Some psychologists refer to this misbelief as “intentional thinking.”Read more at location 2480

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“I don’t know why we hold it against our child,” says Gordon Neufeld. “The most ridiculous thing we can say is that ‘my child is trying to manipulate me.’ It’s like saying the rain is wet. Of course children want to get their own way, and often they can do that only if they get the adult to go along with them.”Read more at location 2504

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The parents of a child with ADD will often find themselves angry and upset. The parent tells the child to hurry: the child drags her feet and may even say something insolent. The parent flies into a rage, and he imagines that his rage has been caused by the child’s behavior. The child is chastised not for what she has done but for the unpleasant feelings experienced by the parent. In reality, the child cannot cause the parent’s rage. She may have inadvertently triggered it, but she is responsible neither for the capacity for rage in the parent nor for the existence of the trigger. The parent acquired them before the child was born. The uncooperative behavior may belong to the child, but the rage belongs to the parent. It is only one among many potential ways the parent could have responded to the child’s procrastination. In fact, when he later thinks about it, he recognizes that his reaction was quite out of proportion to the stimulus. On another day, had he slept better, perhaps, he would have responded quite differently—with non-hostile impatience, with mild annoyance, possibly even with humor.Read more at location 2521

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Beneath the surface of the so-called laziness ADD children are often berated for is also emotional pain. When we consider the word lazy, we realize that it does not explain anything. It is only a negative judgment made about another person who is unwilling to do what we want them to do. The so-called lazy individual will be a whirlwind of energy and activity when faced with a task that arouses interest and excitement. So the laziness and the procrastination are not immutable traits of a person but expressions of his relationship with the world, beginning with the family of origin.Read more at location 2545

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“I do things nobody else would dream of doing, but I feel I could be doing a lot more,” he said. At times he would impulsively take on problems and responsibilities beyond his experience or control.Read more at location 2571

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“To have continued under those circumstances would have been to surrender your soul to your father. Psychologically, you might not have survived that.”Read more at location 2587

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Passivity begins to look like almost second nature to some of these children, although when she is highly motivated, the child will perform many tasks with alacrity. This passivity, what people may call laziness, can signal a strong internal resistance.Read more at location 2623

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The use of rewards—what might be called positive coercion—does not work in the long run any better than threat and punishment, or negative coercion. In the reward, the child senses the parent’s desire to control no less than in the punishment. The issue is the child’s sense of being forced, not the manner in which the force is applied. This was well illustrated in a classic study using magic markers.2 A number of children were screened to select some who showed a natural interest and inclination for playing with magic markers. Those who did were then divided into three different groups. For one group, there was no reward involved and no indication what to do with the markers. Another group was given a small reward to use the markers, and the third was promised a substantial reward. When retested sometime later, the group that had been most rewarded showed the least interest in playing with the magic markers, while the children who had been left uninstructed showed by far the greatest motivation to use them. Simple behaviorist principles would suggest it ought to have been the other way around, another illustration that behavioral approaches have no more than short-term efficacy. At work here, of course, was residual counterwill in response to positive coercion. In a similar experiment, the psychologist Edward Deci observed the behaviors of two groups of college students vis-à-vis a puzzle game they had originally all been equally intrigued by. One group was to receive a monetary reward each time a puzzle was solved; the other was given no external incentive. Once the payments stopped, the paid group proved far more likely to abandon the game than their unpaid counterparts. “Rewards may increase the likelihood of behaviors,” Dr. Deci remarks, “but only so long as the rewards keep coming... Stop the pay, stop the play.”Read more at location 2682

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Even though you try to put people under some control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.Read more at location 2700

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In cases of divorce or separation, for example, a mother may complain that her child acts out with her but is well behaved with the father. One psychologist’s report in a custody case I was asked to review even concluded that the father was the better parent because the young child—a five-year-old with clear signs of hyperactivity—seemed better mannered in the psychologist’s office with the father than in the presence of the mother. The mother also reported that the child was especially uncontrollable in the day or two immediately following overnight visits with the father, further proof in the mind of the psychologist of her ineptitude as a parent. This psychologist seemed not to have understood that the child’s supposed bad behavior with the mother really represented a sense of greater security. Since the mother did not treat the child as harshly as the father, who, as he proudly explained, would hit the child’s fingers as a method of discipline, the child’s counterwill reactions were not suppressed in her presence. On the contrary, the suppressed counterwill built up when the child was with the father erupted with all the greater force in the safety of the mother’s care. The children most at risk for problems later in life are those who feel so threatened that their counterwill falls completely silent. Many a good little boy or good little girl grows up to be a depressed and troubled adult.Read more at location 2718

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Feelings that are expressed directly do not need to be acted out in destructive physical behaviors. As children start to use words, they become less victims of their own impulses. They can now put the feeling out there, outside themselves, where they can see it. We, the parents, can come alongside. At least we can say, “Yeah, I know. It’s understandable. I don’t expect you to feel like it.” “It’s a lot easier for a child to comply,” Gordon Neufeld points out, “when they know at least you understand what they experience.”Read more at location 2752

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see now that my own counterwill reaction was engaged, a sign that my own sense of self was not completely developed.Read more at location 2759

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One fence-mending tactic I have developed is to promise my daughter as an absolute rule that no punishment I pronounce in a state of anger will ever be carried out.Read more at location 2775

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Too often parents confuse discipline or good parenting with control. They are supported in this misbelief by their relatives and neighbors, or by voices in the media, who say that the only problem with the behavior of ADD children is that parents are too lax with their discipline, too weak to control their son or daughter. If that were true, children treated harshly should be the best behaved and should grow up into the best citizens. As a survey of the population of any foster home or prison would show, the contrary is true.Read more at location 2780

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A child who must meet only parental expectations will likely acquire a chronic sense of incompetence as she fails over and over again to live up to them. Or she may function well enough as viewed from the outside but will have to pay a grievous price internally. She will be unable to experience the joy and satisfaction of acting from her own free choice and may not learn what her own genuine preferences are. Her self-esteem will hinge on what she does, not on who she is. Even if she succeeds in the eyes of others, she will be mercilessly critical of herself.Read more at location 2830

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It is worth recalling here that the injudicious use of rewards and praise can be pressure tactics no less than verbal or physical coercion. As we have seen, there are three dangers with motivating by means of reward and praise. First, they feed the anxiety that not the person but the desired achievement is what is valued by the parent. They directly reinforce the insecurity of the ADD child. Second, since children can sense the parents’ will pushing them, even if under benign disguises such as gifts or warm words, counterwill will be strengthened. Third, praise and reward will themselves become the goal, at the expense of the child’s interest in the actual process of what he is doing. Children thus motivated will sooner or later learn to get by with the least amount of effort necessary to earn the praise or the reward. Short cuts and cheating often follow.Read more at location 2854

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parents need to structure their time so that they can be present when homework is being done. This does not mean hovering over the child and correcting her every mistake, but simply being around so that the child’s attachment anxiety does not interfere with her motivation to do the work. As attachment security and competence in handling the work improve, the child will have a growing ability to function independently.Read more at location 2865

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“The key is to empathize with the child’s feeling even if it is a feeling you don’t like,” writes Dr. Greenspan. “Often parents think that if they empathize with the child’s feeling, they will somehow encourage that feeling in the child’s mind or intensify it. But recognizing what a child is feeling will help her recognize and label that feeling rather than experience it as a vague sensation.”Read more at location 2893

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Without learning to symbolize emotions they are also likely to experience everything in terms of simple and opposing categories: people are alternately mean or nice, good or bad. It’s either “I love you, Mommy” or “I hate you.” The child has greater autonomy, a greater choice of possible responses, when she can say, “I didn’t like what Mrs. So-and-so said to me in class today,” than when she is restricted to “Mrs. So-and-so is mean.” Language supports freedom, including freedom from one’s own impulses.Read more at location 2900

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The process of becoming connected with other people and learning appropriate human interactions, of developing into a social creature, is called socialization. Children don’t have to be trained into socialization. Because it is a fundamental human drive, we naturally develop connectedness and compassion if our own basic needs have been respected. Socialization is at the apex of a pyramid. The base is formed by secure attachment and autonomy.Read more at location 2930

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My first interview with the parents of ADD teenagers almost always ends with advice that they relax the rules and regulations they have imposed in the hope of inducing better work habits and behaviors in their child. When it comes to rules and regulations, less is more. Until they understand the counterwill dynamic, this seems paradoxical to some parents. Why should we give our daughter more privileges, they ask, when she is showing such irresponsibility with the privileges already granted? The answer is that we are not talking about privileges here. The issue is autonomy, which is not a matter of privileges but of rights. A teenager should have the right to decide when and if to clean her room. If parents are appalled at the unsightly mess, they can shut the door to avoid seeing it. As long as she is not inconveniencing others, it is up to the older teenager to decide how long and with whom she talks on the phone, or what time she goes to bed. A distinction needs to be made between what is simply personal to her, affecting only her, and what affects others as well. Her own room is strictly her business, but participation in housekeeping chores is a family affair, and a mess in the kitchen inconveniences everyone. If we want the adolescent to see such distinctions, we as parents must be able to see them first. A person becomes open to respecting the boundaries of others when her own rights and boundaries are respected. We have to grant autonomy for the inescapable practical reason that without it, no psychological growth will take place and none of our long-term goals will be achieved. Homework and school work in general are points of daily conflict between the ADD teenager and his parents. The poor concentration skills that characterize attention deficit disorder around activities of low interest, the procrastination and the difficulty getting motivated mean that many teenagers with ADD underperform in school and that few of them are working anywhere near their potential. “He will flunk out if we don’t do something,” parents say, or “It’s heartbreaking to see such a bright kid doing so poorly.” My advice is that parents back right off the homework issue if there are more important problems to be tackled. Nobody ever dies of failing Grade 10. It’s not a disease. “That may be true,” some parents have said, “but what about the blow to the teen’s self-esteem that would cause?” I can only respond that such a teen already has low self-esteem. If self-esteem is to grow in the long term, the individual has to heal psychologically, has to feel accepted unconditionally, has to be able to make his own choices. Failing school is not a desired outcome, but the emotional ties within the family and the teen’s sense of autonomy are more important than short-term academic setbacks. If school performance and good family relationships can both be preserved, so much the better. If one would come at the cost of the other, the parent again has to choose between long-term or short-term goals.Read more at location 3171

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I advise parents of an ADD teenager to practice biting their tongues until it hurts—and, I can attest, sometimes it hurts quite a bit.Read more at location 3209

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low self-esteem and merciless self-criticism are so much part of the ADD personality that it would be difficult to know where ADD ends and low self-esteem begins. Many of the traits thought to be caused by attention deficit disorder are, I am convinced, not the expressions of the specific neurophysiological impairments associated with ADD but of low self-esteem. Workaholism, drivenness and inability to say no—all endemic in the adult ADD population—are some of the examples discussed in this chapter.Read more at location 3253

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People who have a grandiose and inflated view of themselves on the conscious level are lacking true self-esteem at the core of their psyche. Their exaggerated self-evaluation is a defense against their deepest feelings of worthlessness.Read more at location 3267

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I have not achieved enough in life. I feel that my abilities exceed my attainments. I feel I could do more.... I vegetate, my ambitions like rotting weeds around me.Read more at location 3280

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What are some of the markers of low self-esteem, besides consciously harsh self-judgment? As mentioned above, an inflated, grandiose view of oneself—frequently seen in politicians, for example. Craving the good opinion of others. Frustration with failure. A tendency to blame oneself excessively when things go wrong, or, on the other hand, an insistence on blaming others: in other words, the propensity to blame someone. Mistreating those who are weaker or subordinate, or accepting mistreatment without resistance. Argumentativeness—having to be in the right or, obversely, assuming that one is always in the wrong. Trying to impose one’s opinion on others or, on the contrary, being afraid to say what one thinks for fear of being judged. Allowing the judgments of others to influence one’s emotions or, its mirror opposite, rigidly rejecting what others may have to say about one’s work or behavior. Other traits of low self-esteem are an overwrought sense of responsibility for other people in relationships and, as we will discuss shortly, an inability to say no. The need to achieve in order to feel good about oneself. How one treats one’s body and psyche speaks volumes about one’s self-esteem: abusing body or soul with harmful chemicals, behaviors, work overload, lack of personal time and space all denote poor self-regard. All of these behaviors and attitudes reveal a fundamental stance towards the self that is conditional and devoid of true self-respect.Read more at location 3286

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Absolutely universal in the stories of all adults with ADD is the memory of never being comfortable about expressing their emotions. When asked whom they confided in when as children they were lonely or in psychic pain, almost none recall feeling invited or safe enough to bare their souls to their parents. They kept their deepest griefs to themselves. On the other hand, many recall being hyperaware of the parents’ difficulties and struggles in the world, of not wanting to trouble them with their own petty and childish problems. The sensitive child, writes the Swiss psychotherapist Alice Miller, has “an amazing capacity to perceive and respond intuitively, that is unconsciously, to this need of the mother, or of both parents.”Read more at location 3317

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ADD adults are convinced that their low self-esteem is a fair reflection of how poorly they have done in life only because they do not understand that their very first failure—their inability to win the full and unconditional acceptance of the adult world—was not their failure at all.Read more at location 3324

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In the majority of adults I have interviewed, it was evident that the inability to accept themselves was heavily reinforced throughout childhood by their parents’ expectations of better performance, and by their disappointment and disapproval at the absence of it. Superimposed on the parents’ anxieties were the contemptuous judgments and shaming that, throughout their childhoods, many of these ADD adults had experienced in school. Not performance as such but the attitudes of the adult world toward performance defined how many children learned to value themselves.Read more at location 3328

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“I have no idea what my feelings are. I’m lucky if I figure out what my feelings were hours or days after something happens, but I never know what they are.”Read more at location 3355

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When we forget how to say no, we surrender self-esteem.Read more at location 3370

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experiences and feelings I have heard from many others with ADD: a painful hyperconsciousness of injustice, accompanied by ineffective rage or by shamed silence. Time after time, adults with ADD relate how sickened they are at seeing someone weak hurt or humiliated—how sickened they are, and how helpless they feel at intervening.Read more at location 3423

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behavior, its workings all the more influential because unconscious. Whenever we experience ourselves caught up in feelings that seem to overwhelm us, we are likely in the realm of implicit memory—as we also are when we find ourselves quite cut off from feelings.Read more at location 3463

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When mother and infant are rapturously gazing into each other’s eyes, the infant at some point will look away, to avoid being overstimulated. He has no anxiety over doing so. Should the mother be the one to break eye contact, however, the infant is mortified and is immediately swept into the physiological state of shame.Read more at location 3592

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So long as I expect another person to provide what I am lacking in myself, I am bound to be disappointed.Read more at location 3645

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The unsolved problem is how to be oneself in contact with other people.Read more at location 3654

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Although, as with every other aspect of ADD, there will be a broad range of variation, no ADD relationship will avoid the problems arising from the mutual lack of maturity. By maturity, I mean here the degree of individuation, the capacity of the person to genuinely sustain herself emotionally during difficult times without having to be mothered or fathered by someone else. I interpose genuinely because many people pretend to themselves and to others that they are capable of taking care of themselves emotionally, but they do so only at the cost of suppressing their anxiety. The buried anxiety will not be denied but will assert itself in the form of psychological symptoms or direct physical illness.Read more at location 3692

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So self-acceptance does not mean self-admiration or even self-liking at every moment of our lives, but tolerance for all our emotions, including those that make us feel uncomfortable.Read more at location 3783

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Guilt is a prime example of an emotion ADD adults would crawl through jungles to escape.Read more at location 3784

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“I’m a people pleaser” is the routine self-description of ADD adults. “I’m always so conscious of what the other person might need from me. I feel guilty if I disappoint someone. I can never say no.” Or, “I am the kind of person whom everyone calls to tell their troubles to. I can’t do that myself, though. I would feel guilty, thinking of all the people in the world who have suffered much more than I can even imagine. I shouldn’t need help.”Read more at location 3786

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Guilt cannot grasp that its services are no longer required. It just hangs around, making us feel uncomfortable. Our problem is that we fear it. We want to get rid of it. I will obey. Anything to make you disappear. Just get out. If we saw in guilt the well-meaning friend it was—doggedly faithful, to a fault—we would make room for it. We would listen to its one-note song of warning, don’t be selfish, but decide for ourselves consciously whether we need to dance to its tune. Yes, thank you, I see what you mean. By all means stick around if you wish, but I will let my adult brain circuits judge whether I am really hurting someone else or merely serving my legitimate needs.Read more at location 3810

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I can attest that in some important aspects of my life—not all—I have always been a people pleaser, suppressing my truest self. I have also often behaved with narcissistic self-regard.Read more at location 3829

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“I cannot believe how much time I have wasted in my life” is a refrain often heard in the litany of self-judgments uttered by the ADD adult. “Here I am finding out in my forties what I should have known as a teenager.” I, too, have gone through wishing I had known ten, twenty, thirty years ago what I have learned since—much of it relatively recently. But I didn’t. If I could have, I would have. It’s that simple. I have no reason to see myself as a victim, but I did not choose the circumstances that shaped my neurophysiology or my personality, which are one and the same thing. One can make choices when, one becomes aware and awake, not before.Read more at location 3835

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Resistance is compounded by denial that one has a problem, by not placing a high enough value on personal emotional needs and psychological growth and by a pessimistic belief that therapy will not do any good.Read more at location 3870

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Of all types of professional training, the one I consider most likely to be of benefit in ADD is family therapy.Read more at location 3896

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When I ask adults to rate themselves according to a simple scale gauging the parenting skills and attention they devote to themselves, the scores tend to be low—so scandalously low that I have advised many of my clients that if they truly were the unfortunate child being parented by them, I would have had little choice but to alert the child protection authorities. (Restraining me was only that first I would have had to blow the whistle on myself.)Read more at location 3923

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If necessary, she may set herself small, incremental goals. It is discouraging to try to accomplish something that may be beyond present capacities. The ADD brain is overwhelmed by a multipartite task. She does not know where to turn, and the all-or-nothing mind-set demands that everything be done at once. Nothing needs to be done at once. The best plan, I find, is not to insist that any one task be finished but to impose a strict time limit in which to work. When the appointed time period is over, stop.Read more at location 3943

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A child with attention deficit disorder may be difficult to rouse in the morning, but in the evening there is no getting him off to bed. I believe the problem is separation anxiety, because I have seen the same child be much more cooperative about bedtime when he feels more secure emotionally. I noted curiously my own experience over the years that at the times when I felt less tension and anxiety about my relationship with my wife, I had less tendency to stay up late. Something in the ADD adult dreads going to bed and turning the light off. The fear is of being alone with one’s urgent mind for even a few short minutes. I used to read until the book would drop from my hands and would wake hours later, still wearing my glasses and the lamp still burning. Many others with ADD have described the same bedtime routine. The fear of being alone with the mind is, I believe, an implicit memory of finding oneself, in infancy, cut off from contact with the parent.Read more at location 3954

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A contributing factor is that the distractible ADD mind does find it easier to focus when the noises and intrusions of the day have abated, and everyone else has gone to bed. Many adults have told me this is when they get their best work done, or when they feel at peace enough to read or to rest.Read more at location 3964

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The ADD adult’s workaholism and dread of the word “no” leads her to overextend herself.Read more at location 4004

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It is unusual for me to meet an ADD adult who does not have some secret longing for artistic expression, and almost as unusual to find one actively doing something about it. Essential to finding meaning and purpose in life is the liberation of one’s creative instincts.Read more at location 4014

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I do not believe ADD leads to creativity any more than creativity causes ADD. Rather, they both originate in the same inborn trait: sensitivity. For creativity, a temperamental sensitivity is indispensable. The sensitive individual, as we have seen, draws into herself the unseen emotional and psychic communications of her environment. On some levels of the unconscious, she will, therefore, have a deeper awareness of the world. She may also be more attuned to particular sensory input, such as sound, color or musical tone. Thus the sensitivity provides her with the raw materials her mind will rework and reshape. Thus sensitivity contributes to the emergence of attention deficit disorder, as well as to creativity.Read more at location 4025

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Part of my treatment approach is to explore with people their creative natures,Read more at location 4032

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When it comes to changing unhealthy habits or instituting healthy ones, writes Weil, “whether you succeed or fail is less important than making the attempt.”Read more at location 4099

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“The cortex’s job is to prevent the inappropriate response rather than to produce the appropriate one,” writes neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux.Read more at location 4455

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When the maternal face expresses positive internal emotional states, infants are more likely to seek the mother’s gaze. Toward the end of the first year, as babies begin walking, checking the mother’s face becomes an important guide to exploring the world. A happy, supportive look from mother encourages interest in the environment. It takes but a moment—on the average 1.33 seconds—for the infant to read in mother’s facial expression the signals allowing continued exploration and interest, or the signs of discouragement. (Data from Schore.)Read more at location 4559

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Hip drive is the basis for squatting power,Read more at location 1211

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imagine a hand placed on your sacrum, right at the base of the spine, and imagine pushing this hand straight up in the air with your butt.Read more at location 1214

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Squat depth is a function of hip angle,Read more at location 1271

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It is important that the bounce is not followed by a pause and then a drive up. The bounce must be incorporated into the drive – it must be anticipated as the first part of the drive.Read more at location 1332

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To recap: The complete concept of the correct use of the hips in the squat is best understood as the use of both an actively locked lumbar extension and actively shoved-out knees, resulting in a below-parallel squat that incorporates a stretch reflex, using all the muscles of the posterior chain in the most optimal way possible.Read more at location 1366

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In your squat stance, at the top with the bar in position on your back, look straight down at a point on the floor between your toes. You will see a picture of your knees relative to your feet, and the movement of your knees relative to your toes will be apparent as you descend. Look at your knees all the way down and back up a couple of times with the empty bar. You will need to practice this because it will seem awkward at first. But as you watch your knees change position through the movement and as the sets get heavier, you will see exactly what the problems are and you will have immediate feedback on what you need to do to correct them. If your concept of the squat is correct, this technique is the best way to fix your knee problems.Read more at location 1477

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shoulder-width heels produces the best effect for general strength training.Read more at location 1497

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This trick is simply keeping the barbell over the mid-foot by thinking about doing so.Read more at location 1535

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A weightlifting belt adds to this effect, its main function being to add support to the cylinder from the front and sides,Read more at location 1580

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More people drown in 5-gallon buckets each year than have had barbell training-related strokes since the invention of barbells.Read more at location 1630

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Any lifter who bails out of the missed rep and leaves the spotters holding the bar needs to be beaten with a hammer.Read more at location 1666

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When one spotter stands behind the lifter, leaning over with his arms wrapped around and under the lifter’s chest, this is not only an embarrassing position but also a terribly ineffective and unsafe one.Read more at location 1669

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As a general rule, do not introduce a new variable into the work set – if you’re going to wear a belt in the work set, make sure you use it in the last warm-up set so that your movement pattern will not be altered or your attention diverted under the heaviest weight of the day.Read more at location 1760

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Squatting in front of a mirror is a really bad idea.Read more at location 1849

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The most important reason to squat without a mirror in front of you is that you should be developing your kinesthetic sense while you squat.Read more at location 1860

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As a general rule, the more of the body involved in an exercise, the better the exercise.Read more at location 2008

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the key to shoulder health for your whole athletic career and your life as an active adult is to press correctly as an integral part of your training.Read more at location 2098

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before the bench press became the sole focus of upper-body training in the gym, shoulder injuries were uncommon.Read more at location 2100

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For every bench press workout, there should be a press workout.Read more at location 2102

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when in doubt, go a little wider.Read more at location 2174

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Once this tension is built, push your hips forward so that your weight goes onto your toes.Read more at location 2235

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As soon as the bar crosses the top of your forehead, get under the bar.Read more at location 2252

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The distance between the shoulder and the bar becomes too long a moment arm to overcome: bar path problems.Read more at location 2282

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Weighted sit-ups can be helpful to develop a strong set of abs, but the press itself provides enough ab work for most people.Read more at location 2398

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Most often you didn’t get under the bar.Read more at location 2407

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The importance of keeping the bar close to the shoulders – “close to the nose” is our cue for this position – cannot be overstated.Read more at location 2409

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The most efficient hip drive requires very tight quads and abs at heavy weight, so tight that they may well feel like they are about to cramp.Read more at location 2413

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A beard is handy for this – touch your beard every rep and you will have controlled the bar path. The hairless and female are at a disadvantage here.Read more at location 2419

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The ego interferes with thinking, causing an attempt to handle weights that cannot be lifted with correct form.Read more at location 2435

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More important, you need to learn how to bear down on a hard rep and finish it without cheating so that you develop the mental discipline to stay with a hard task and finish it correctly. This is one of those indirect benefits that can be obtained from physical education. If you learn nothing else from training, it is very important to learn that your limits are seldom where you think they are.Read more at location 2439

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The deadlift also serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard.Read more at location 2477

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The deadlift starts at the mechanically hardest part of the movementRead more at location 2519

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So if all the warm-ups possible are done with a double-overhand grip, and the alternate grip is reserved for the really heavy sets, grip strength develops quickly.Read more at location 2527

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Chalk is important for hand safety. It keeps the skin dry and tight, making folding under a load less of a problem. You should apply chalk before you start training every day, for all the lifts.Read more at location 2583

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When you have the bar in this position, point your toes out. The angle will be at least 10 degrees and maybe as much as 30 degrees (see the picture of George Hechter in Figure 4-39). Your toes might be more pointed out than you want them to be. This stance places the hips in external rotation just as it did for the squat, providing the same benefits: more adductor and external rotator involvement in the movement, as well as clearance between the femurs for the torso so that a good start position can be obtained.Read more at location 2641

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When you are in the correct position, stare at a point 12–15 feet in front of you on the floor so that your neck can assume its normal anatomical position. You might need to think about keeping your chin down, too.Read more at location 2682

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the bar never leaves contact with your legs on the way up to lockout.Read more at location 2692

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At the top of the pull, just lift your chest. That’s all; don’t shrug your shoulders either up or back, and don’t lean back. Just raise the chest.Read more at location 2707

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Be sure that you lower the bar by first unlocking your hips and knees, and then shoving your hips backward and letting the bar slide down your thighs in a straight vertical line, with your lower back locked in extension, in a movement that is the opposite of the upward bar path.Read more at location 2716

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When the shoulder is in front of the bar and the back angle is stable in a pull, the angle of attachment between the lat and the humerus is about 90 degrees, since this is the angle at which the least muscular force is required to produce a rotation force that is equal and opposite to the weight.Read more at location 3076

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the arms are not plumb in a deadlift because the lats do not attach to the arms at 90 degrees when the arms are plumb.Read more at location 3090

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the correct starting position for everyone will have the previously discussed things in common: the shoulders will be slightly in front of the bar; and the bar will be touching the shins directly over the mid-foot, resulting in the vertical alignment of the scapula, bar, and mid-foot.Read more at location 3147

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As you pull the bar off of the floor, your knees and hips extend together while your back angle stays constant, meaning that the quads initiate the push off the floor while the hamstrings hold the back angle constant, resulting in an opening of the knee and hip angles.Read more at location 3193

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It might also be helpful to think about pushing the bar back into your legs with your lats, reinforcing the close-to-the-shin position a second wayRead more at location 3205

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The quadriceps straighten the knees, and if the back angle stays constant while this happens, the bar comes vertically up the shins.Read more at location 3230

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can fix it by thinking about squeezing your hamstrings and glutes tight before you pull, thus making them better at doing their job of holding your ass down.Read more at location 3254

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A correct deadlift that results from a correct setup will show no change in back angle as the pull starts and for at least the first couple of inches of bar path off the floor.Read more at location 3262

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The most efficient pull is a straight vertical line over the mid-foot, with the shoulders just in front of the bar.Read more at location 3298

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Some bars are manufactured with no thought given to the possibility that they might someday be used to deadlift. Don’t use these bars.Read more at location 3313

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the best grip for the deadlift is one that allows your arms to hang as straight down from the shoulders as possible when viewed from the front,Read more at location 3318

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It is easier to keep your chest up and your upper back tight if your eyes are focused on a point that places your neck in an anatomically neutral position;Read more at location 3420

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Get in the habit of holding the bar locked out at the top for just a second before you set it down, so that you achieve a stable position first.Read more at location 3476

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Yes, bench pressing makes your neck grow, too, making new dress shirts inevitable.Read more at location 3610

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ALWAYS start every lift with an empty bar, whether learning the lift for the first time or warming up for a personal record.Read more at location 3655

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You’ll notice immediately that if your eyes don’t move from their fixed position, the bar will go to the same place every rep.Read more at location 3716

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Except for the squat, there is no thumbless grip in barbell training.Read more at location 3758

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what the hands cannot squeeze, the shoulders cannot drive as efficiently.Read more at location 3776

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(Distal is the end furthest from the center of the body, and proximal is the closest to it.)Read more at location 3781

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Some lifters like to think about leaving their fingerprints in the knurl of the bar to increase their squeeze.Read more at location 3781

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elbow directly underneath the bar so that no moment force develops between the bar and the elbow.Read more at location 3839

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The short version: keep your chest up high when you bench.Read more at location 3931

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The lats cannot make the bar go up, but they are quite capable of reinforcing the chest-up position that is so important for mechanical efficiency.Read more at location 3955

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We are not concerned with our favorite muscles. We do not have favorite muscles.Read more at location 3972

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So a strict touch-and-go is a good compromise, letting you lift more weight but still providing lots of training for the pressing muscles.Read more at location 4008

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Don’t think about lowering the bar; just think about driving it up.Read more at location 4028

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do not get in the habit of shifting your head so that your eyes can see one side of the bench uprights when you’re racking the weight.Read more at location 4099

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Used correctly, the legs drive against the floor, transferring force horizontally along the bench through the hips into the arched back to reinforce the arch and keep the chest in its high position, established when the shoulders were pulled back.Read more at location 4112

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Flat feet are stickier feet, better connected to the ground through more surface area.Read more at location 4181

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If you do not have a power rack, do not bench heavy by yourself.Read more at location 4262

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any rep touched by anyone other than the lifter cannot be counted as a rep by the lifter.Read more at location 4339

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Powerlifting” is a bad choice of name for the sport; it should be “strengthlifting,” but I predict that my suggestion will not be adopted anytime soon.)Read more at location 4497

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the power clean is the best way to increase the ability to explode – to display powerRead more at location 4509

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The vertical-jump test is a naked look at the quality of the neuromuscular system and is an indicator of the ultimate ability of an athlete to be explosive.Read more at location 4534

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Lower the bar by dropping it down the chest and catching it at the hang position. This means that you do not reverse-upright-row or reverse-curl the bar down to the hang position – you actually drop the bar and catch it. Some people actually let it slip from their grip before they figure this out. Just catch the bar at the hang, with no attempt at all to lower it with the arms. This step teaches two important things.Read more at location 4655

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if you don’t feel the bar on your thighs when you clean, it is wrong.Read more at location 4682

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Think hard about not bending your elbows as the bar slides down your thighs to the jumping position.Read more at location 4695

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If I were coaching you, I’d let you do only one rep at each position.Read more at location 4785

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The hook grip is critical in enabling heavy weights to be used. It should not be considered optional.Read more at location 4806

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At first, the model is slow to the jumping position, and then fast at the jump. As the pull becomes more comfortable and the correct movement pattern is more embedded, the model becomes the higher the bar, the faster it moves.Read more at location 4819

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The shrug is a reflexive action that occurs as a result of jumping with the loaded bar in the hands. In an attempt to protect the shoulders from the load in the hands, which would otherwise pull the scapulas down as the body goes up, the traps fire into a concentric contraction. This shrug has been taking place since you started jumping with the bar, but it has demanded none of your attention. Later, you can focus on the shrug to help you rack very heavy weights, but right now, it’s already in the movement without your having to think about it. This method allows you to focus on developing the correct straight elbow position, jumping high, and keeping the bar close – the more important things for a novice learning the clean.Read more at location 4842

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The power clean is a complicated movement, and of all the lifts presented in this program, it benefits the most from the input of an experienced coach.Read more at location 4927

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the bar must be pulled correctly at the bottom and fast at the top.Read more at location 5008

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Think about “squeezing” the bar off the floor. Or think about “long straight arms.” Or just “slow off the floor.”Read more at location 5023

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Bent elbows just absolutely suck. They are one of the most persistent, hardest to correct, and most detrimental of bad habits that a lifter can acquire. Make it a priority to learn and keep perfectly straight elbows.Read more at location 5048

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Your elbows can rotate very fast – blindingly fast, in fact – if the muscles of your arms are relaxed and provide no resistance to the rotation.Read more at location 5057

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it is important to understand that the acceleration of the load starts BEFORE the jump actually occurs, and this acceleration results in peak velocity at the jump.Read more at location 5077

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The elbows bend only after the force generated against the floor stops.Read more at location 5231

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Actually, if you try to touch your shirt on the way up, this will usually correct the errors made at the bottom. This is an excellent example of “correction displacement,” in which sufficient attention focused on correcting an error later in a sequence of movements unconsciously causes the correction of the initial problem earlier in the sequence. If you manage to touch your shirt with the bar before you rack it, you will have to get back on your heels to do it, since the shirt is more back toward the heels than forward toward the toes. This correction displacement trick comes in handy many times in the weight room and throughout athletics.Read more at location 5282

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The faster your feet move from the stance used for pulling into the stance used for catching, the less time the bar has to decelerate.Read more at location 5312

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It is okay to release the hook, or even to let the last two fingers drop off the bar if it facilitates a good rack position.Read more at location 5332

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The rack position, with arms rotated such that the forearms and upper arms are beside each other, as opposed to stackedRead more at location 5345

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It is helpful to think about lifting the elbows up and in toward the middle.Read more at location 5347

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Under ideal circumstances, the best grip for the rack position is with four fingers under the bar (top). Flexibility limitations may make it necessary to use fewer fingers, but the most important consideration is elbow position. Do what is necessary to get the elbows up.Read more at location 5376

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the stomp actually sharpens the timing of the racking movement.Read more at location 5391

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As a general rule, don’t let go of the bar until it is just above the floor.Read more at location 5444

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It is fashionable in some circles to drop empty bars from overhead or to let go of a dropped bar from overhead. These circles can go somewhere else to train, because equipment is expensive and the gym must be respected as a place where you control your immature urges to call attention to yourself.Read more at location 5691

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The squat, bench press, deadlift, press, and clean form the basis of any successful, well-designed training program.Read more at location 5700

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Joint soreness is a much more serious matter than muscular soreness or even muscular injury. Joint problems can persist for years, while muscle belly injuries will heal in a matter of days or weeks.Read more at location 5739

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Supinating one hand for a heavy single deadlift is a necessary evil in a meet, but multiple reps with one shoulder in internal rotation and the other in external rotation produce an asymmetric shoulder stress that some people do not tolerate well.Read more at location 5795

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“shoot the hips” is a good cue for this movement.Read more at location 5827

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No exaggerated shrug is necessary or useful; the hips are shoved forward into extension with the chest held up, and this is all that needs to be done at the top.Read more at location 5829

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Barbell shrugs can be done with very heavy weights, 100 pounds over your PR deadlift or more, due to their very short range of motion and good leverage position. In fact, to be effective, barbell shrugs must be done very heavy. But they are an advanced exercise, and not everybody should do them.Read more at location 5844

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if you cannot easily hang-clean 135 from a dead stop on the pins, you have no business doing heavy shrugs.Read more at location 5857

B006XJR5ZA 878653 Note: Add a note

barbell shrugs should be used conservatively in the schedule, maybe once every two weeks in the appropriately designed program.Read more at location 5877

B006XJR5ZA 881567 Note: Add a note

Air is support, and if ever in your life you need support, it will be at the bottom of a box squat.Read more at location 5931

B006XJR5ZA 889615 Note: Add a note

you will develop pec insertion tendinitis if you do too much work on partial exercises that allow the use of heavy weights. Shoulders are easier to injure and more susceptible to overuse than knees and hips are, and dead-stop exercises with heavy weights tend to inflame the attachments pretty badly if they are used too often or at excessive volume. But if you don’t get carried away by the glamour of the heavier weights that are possible because of the shorter range of motion, partial benches can make you very strong.Read more at location 6004

B006XJR5ZA 900996 Note: Add a note

driving the butt up with the bar on the back just requires that the chest be maintained in position, preserving the back angle.Read more at location 6088

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the front squat is best left alone until the squat’s movement pattern is thoroughly embedded.Read more at location 6098

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the front squat is a less effective back exercise than the squat.Read more at location 6110

B006XJR5ZA 916544 Note: Add a note

The grip must allow your elbows to come up high enough that your shoulders can support the load while your back remains verticalRead more at location 6148

B006XJR5ZA 922262 Note: Add a note

The elbows-up position traps the bar between the fingers and the neck, but the weight is on the delts, not on the hands.Read more at location 6182

B006XJR5ZA 927310 Note: Add a note

If your primary interest is in moving the heaviest weight, as a powerlifter needs to do, the widest grip legal for the meet is the one to use. If your interest is in the greatest amount of muscle stressed to cause an adaptation, a medium grip is the most useful. And if you need to get more triceps work, a close grip is useful for that.Read more at location 6273

B006XJR5ZA 941285 Note: Add a note

As a general rule, exercises that depend on less muscle mass or fewer muscle groups tend to fail more abruptly in their bar path than do exercises that use more muscles.Read more at location 6289

B006XJR5ZA 943394 Note: Add a note

The decline press gets recommended for its effects on the “lower pecs,” but dips perform this function much more effectively, while involving more muscle mass, more balance and coordination, and more nervous system activity, as discussed later.Read more at location 6299

B006XJR5ZA 945072 Note: Add a note

done correctly, with the back locked into rigid extension and no knee extension involved, the RDL is perhaps the best assistance exercise for deadlifts and cleans because it works the very things that cause heavy deadlifts to be missed.Read more at location 6466

B006XJR5ZA 970126 Note: Add a note

This may mean that the grip for a push press is a power-clean grip, wider than you use for a press,Read more at location 6649

B006XJR5ZA 997316 Note: Add a note

There is no better way to use barbells to train for power production.Read more at location 6677

B006XJR5ZA 1001607 Note: Add a note

chins are a terribly useful exercise for lifters at all stages of training advancement.Read more at location 6681

B006XJR5ZA 1002171 Note: Add a note

A correct chin-up starts with straight elbows and ends with the chin well over the bar, as high as possible. An incorrect chin-up displays an incomplete range of motion, starting with bent arms (left) or ending under the bar (right).Read more at location 6719

B006XJR5ZA 1008069 Note: Add a note

Chin-ups are a better introductory exercise than pull-ups, and perhaps a better exercise altogether because they involve more muscle mass.Read more at location 6722

B006XJR5ZA 1008370 Note: Add a note

A shoulder-width grip is good for our purposes and presents no problems for most people.Read more at location 6734

B006XJR5ZA 1010095 Note: Add a note

Chalk makes for a better grip and fewer calluses, and using it is a necessary. A knurled or rough bar destroys the hands and therefore adversely affects the rest of your training.Read more at location 6734

B006XJR5ZA 1010275 Note: Add a note

Each rep starts from a full stretch at the bottom, with elbows straight and scapulas stretched up, and is complete when your chin clears the bar. A more honest approach might be to touch your chest to the bar, but we’ll count the rep if your chin clears the bar with your face forward, and your head not back. Try to stay as close to the bar as possible.Read more at location 6738

B006XJR5ZA 1010920 Note: Add a note

Cutting the rep short at either the top or the bottom is as bad as squatting high: the primary benefit of the exercise lies at the ends of the movement.Read more at location 6747

B006XJR5ZA 1012085 Note: Add a note

Kipping chin-ups and pull-ups have proven themselves to be useless as a way to strengthen the strict versions of the movement, and in the absence of enough strength to do the strict versions, they have proven to be dangerous for shoulder health.Read more at location 6772

B006XJR5ZA 1015981 Note: Add a note

Resist the temptation to jump on any bandwagon that encourages short-term gratification at the expense of long-term progress.Read more at location 6774

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A good rule of thumb is that when you can do 12–15 bodyweight reps, it is probably time to start doing some of the work weighted, possibly alternating higher-rep bodyweight workouts with lower-rep weighted workouts.Read more at location 6781

B006XJR5ZA 1017223 Note: Add a note

Several sets across are appropriate for chins and pull-ups, either weighted, unweighted, or assisted. And many people have made steady linear progress by microloading their chins the same way they program the bench press and press, adding 1.5–2 pounds to three sets of five reps every workout.Read more at location 6782

B006XJR5ZA 1017517 Note: Add a note

The dip is a good substitute for the bench press if it cannot be done for some reason, and is far superior to the decline bench press, which there is no good reason to do.Read more at location 6788

B006XJR5ZA 1018241 Note: Add a note

The quality of an exercise increases with the involvement of more muscles, more joints, and more central nervous system activity needed to control them. The more of the body involved in an exercise, the more of these criteria are met. When the whole body moves, a more nearly ideal state is achieved, with lots of muscles and nerves controlling lots of joints, and the central nervous system keeping track of lots of different pieces of the body doing many different things, hopefully correctly.Read more at location 6794

B006XJR5ZA 1019502 Note: Add a note

First, barbell rows are not a substitute for power cleans. If you use them for this purpose, you have decided to omit a more important exercise in favor of an assistance exercise, an easier movement that does not provide most of the benefits of the more important basic exercise. I say this because of the prevalence of this substitution since the second edition of this book was published.Read more at location 6875

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When you are rowing from the floor, the most critical factor in technique is the position of the lower back.Read more at location 6890

B006XJR5ZA 1033558 Note: Add a note

Rows are not useful at weights so heavy that form is hard to maintain.Read more at location 6932

B006XJR5ZA 1039792 Note: Add a note

As the weight gets heavy, there will be a pronounced tendency to allow your chest to drop down to meet the bar, completing the rep from the top down instead of from the bottom up. When this chest drop becomes excessive, the weight is too heavy. And “excessive” is a rather subjective concept here. Someone might decide that no chest drop is allowable, in which case heavy weights cannot be used in the exercise. Or someone might decide that as long as the chest can be touched with the bar, the rep counts. This degree of variability is one of the things that distinguish an ancillary exercise from a primary exercise: if a large degree of variability is inherent in the performance of an exercise, it cannot be judged effectively or quantified objectively. For this reason, the barbell row makes a very good ancillary exercise but a very poor contest lift.Read more at location 6943

B006XJR5ZA 1042205 Note: Add a note

The reverse-grip row can produce tennis or golfer’s elbow very quickly,Read more at location 6953

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(a bench has no parts that move during an exercise; a machine does)Read more at location 6963

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Curls are performed to train the biceps, a muscle that commands an inordinate amount of attention from far too many people.Read more at location 7074

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Remember that our definition of “functional exercise” is a normal human movement that can be performed under a scalable, increasable load.Read more at location 7110

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progress means more strength, not more exercises;Read more at location 7420

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You do not need to do many different exercises to get strong – you need to get strong on a very few important exercises, movements that train the whole body as a system, not as a collection of separate body parts.Read more at location 7421

B006XJR5ZA 1113311 Note: Add a note

Doing the squat first provides a superior warm-up for all the subsequent movements, and doing the squat while you’re fresh grants it the attention it deserves as the most important exercise in the program.Read more at location 7463

B006XJR5ZA 1119547 Note: Add a note

if your schedule does not allow time for proper warm-up, it does not allow time for training at all.Read more at location 7490

B006XJR5ZA 1123658 Note: Add a note

A sets-across routine more closely mimics the effort usually involved in sports and more effectively allows the trainee to learn to work hard, and therefore produces a more useful adaptation.Read more at location 7563

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In fact, one of the most effective strategies for intermediates is to do the squat, bench, and press for five sets across of five reps, once a week as one of the three workouts, increasing the weight used by very small manageable amounts each week.Read more at location 7565

B006XJR5ZA 1134917 Note: Add a note

Sets of five may be the most useful rep range you will use over your entire training career, and as long as you lift weights, sets of five will be important.Read more at location 7637

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Don’t be afraid to take small jumps – instead, do be afraid to stop improving.Read more at location 7657

B006XJR5ZA 1148565 Note: Add a note

It is always preferable to take smaller jumps and sustain the progress than to take bigger jumps and get stuck early.Read more at location 7661

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For a novice, the deadlift should not be trained using sets across. It is really easy to get really beat-up doing a lot of heavy deadlifts. One work set at the intensity of a real work set is quite sufficient to produce improvement.Read more at location 7683

B006XJR5ZA 1152644 Note: Add a note

Programming beyond the novice phase is beyond the scope of this book and is dealt with in detail in Practical Programming for Strength Training, Second EditionRead more at location 7702

B006XJR5ZA 1155506 Note: Add a note

It is understandable that you want your program to show results. But please understand this, if you miss everything else in this entire book: stronger does not necessarily mean more weight on the bar. Resist the temptation to add weight at the expense of correct technique – you are doing no one any favors when you sacrifice form for weight on the bar. Progress stops, bad habits get formed, injuries accumulate, and no one benefits in the long run.Read more at location 7719

B006XJR5ZA 1158282 Note: Add a note

“Well” means four or so meals per day, based on meat and egg protein sources, with lots of fruit and vegetables and lots of milk. Lots.Read more at location 7741

B006XJR5ZA 1161257 Note: Add a note

A gallon of whole milk per day, added to the regular diet at intervals throughout the day, will put weight on any skinny kid. Really.Read more at location 7748

B006XJR5ZA 1162207 Note: Add a note

Bars are the place to spend money, if you have it.Read more at location 7962

B006XJR5ZA 1194334 Note: Add a note

Although collars are important on occasion, it is much more useful to learn to keep the bar level so that plates don’t slide off it.Read more at location 8011

B006XJR5ZA 1201702 Note: Add a note

Exercise methods that produce very high levels of soreness as a constant feature of the program – due to random exercise selection that precludes adaptation to the stress – can contribute to long-term systemic inflammation, the kind that produces poor health instead of fitness and strength. Soreness is an unavoidable part of training, but it should not be sought after as a primary objective and worn as a badge of honor for its own sake.Read more at location 8083

B006XJR5ZA 1212848 Note: Add a note

If pain occurs immediately in response to a movement done during training, it should be assumed to be an injury and should be treated as such.Read more at location 8101

B006XJR5ZA 1215153 Note: Add a note

Hubris, not heroism, is demonstrated when a guy comes back after a year’s layoff and tries to repeat his PRs that day.Read more at location 8116

B006XJR5ZA 1217509 Note: Add a note

Note that women are not listed as a special population: they are half of the population. Anyone who claims that women are so different in their physiological response to exercise that the principles of basic barbell training do not apply to them is thinking either irrationally or commercially.Read more at location 8153

B006XJR5ZA 1223216 Note: Add a note

At each step toward realism, the problem gradually changes from choosing the right course of action (substantive rationality) to finding a way of calculating, very approximately, where a good course of action lies (procedural rationality).Read more at location 554

B002U60C7S 83249 Note: Add a note

In the face of real-world complexity, the business firm turns to procedures that find good enough answers to questions whose best answers are unknowable.Read more at location 586

B002U60C7S 87986 Note: Add a note

With the collapse of the Eastern European economies around 1990 the simple faith in central planning was replaced in some influential minds by an equally simple faith in markets. The collapse taught that modern economies cannot function well without smoothly operating markets. The poor performance of these economies since the collapse has taught that they also cannot function well without effective organizations.Read more at location 671

B002U60C7S 100957 Note: Add a note

In simple cases uncertainty arising from exogenous events can be handled by estimating the probabilities of these events, as insurance companies do—but usually at a cost in computational complexity and information gathering. An alternative is to use feedback to correct for unexpected or incorrectly predicted events. Even if events are imperfectly anticipated and the response to them less than accurate, adaptive systems may remain stable in the face of severe jolts, their feedback controls bringing them back on course after each shock that displaces them. After we fail to predict the blizzard, snowplows still clear the streets. Although the presence of uncertainty does not make intelligent choice impossible, it places a premium on robust adaptive procedures instead of optimizing strategies that work well only when finely tuned to precisely known environments.Read more at location 693

B002U60C7S 104748 Note: Add a note

Game theory’s most valuable contribution has been to show that rationality is effectively undefinable when competitive actors have unlimited computational capabilities for outguessing each other, but that the problem does not arise as acutely in a world, like the real world, of bounded rationality.Read more at location 742

B002U60C7S 111603 Note: Add a note

The NIE explanation for sometimes preferring organizations to markets is that certain kinds of market contracts incur transaction costs that can be avoided or reduced by replacing the sales contract by an employment relation. On the other hand, as all economic actors are supposed by the NIE theory to be motivated by selfish interest, organizations incur the costs of rewarding their employees for following organizational goals instead of personal interest and of supervising them to see that they do SO.Read more at location 774

B002U60C7S 116567 Note: Add a note

In facing uncertainty, standardization and coordination, achieved through agreed-upon assumptions and specifications, may be more effective than prediction.Read more at location 812

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individuals who are docile—who tend to accept such information and advice—have a great advantage in fitness over those who are not docile—who reject social influence. Docile people do not have to learn about hot stoves by touching them.Read more at location 850

B002U60C7S 127617 Note: Add a note

“Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot,” he wrote. The content of a medium is just “the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.”Read more at location 125

B003R7L90I 19007 Note: Add a note

The computer, I began to sense, was more than just a simple tool that did what you told it to do. It was a machine that, in subtle but unmistakable ways, exerted an influence over you. The more I used it, the more it altered the way I worked. At first I had found it impossible to edit anything on-screen. I’d print out a document, mark it up with a pencil, and type the revisions back into the digital version. Then I’d print it out again and take another pass with the pencil. Sometimes I’d go through the cycle a dozen times a day. But at some point—and abruptly—my editing routine changed. I found I could no longer write or revise anything on paper. I felt lost without the Delete key, the scrollbar, the cut and paste functions, the Undo command. I had to do all my editing on-screen. In using the word processor, I had become something of a word processor myself.Read more at location 271

B003R7L90I 41554 Note: Add a note

As a result of such experiments, it’s now believed that the sensations of a “phantom limb” felt by amputees are largely the result of neuroplastic changes in the brain.Read more at location 535

B003R7L90I 80384 Note: Add a note

Our expanding understanding of the brain’s adaptability has led to the development of new therapies for conditions that used to be considered untreatable.25 Doidge, in his 2007 book The Brain That Changes Itself, tells the story of a man named Michael Bernstein who suffered a severe stroke when he was fifty-four, damaging an area in the right half of his brain that regulated movement in the left side of his body. Through a traditional program of physical therapy, he recovered some of his motor skills, but his left hand remained crippled and he had to use a cane to walk. Until recently, that would have been the end of the story. But Bernstein enrolled in a program of experimental therapy, run at the University of Alabama by a pioneering neuroplasticity researcher named Edward Taub. For as many as eight hours a day, six days a week, Bernstein used his left hand and his left leg to perform routine tasks over and over again. One day he might wash the pane of a window. The next day he might trace the letters of the alphabet. The repeated actions were a means of coaxing his neurons and synapses to form new circuits that would take over the functions once carried out by the circuits in the damaged area in his brain. In a matter of weeks, he regained nearly all of the movement in his hand and his leg, allowing him to return to his everyday routines and throw away his cane. Many of Taub’s other patients have experienced similarly strong recoveries.Read more at location 537

B003R7L90I 81977 Note: Add a note

He found that the people who had only imagined playing the notes exhibited precisely the same changes in their brains as those who had actually pressed the keys.31 Their brains had changed in response to actions that took place purely in their imagination—in response, that is, to their thoughts. Descartes may have been wrong about dualism, but he appears to have been correct in believing that our thoughts can exert a physical influence on, or at least cause a physical reaction in, our brains. We become, neurologically, what we think.Read more at location 596

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The three top-selling Japanese novels in 2007 were all originally written on mobile phones.Read more at location 1735

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But while Johnson’s diagnosis is correct, his interpretation of the differing patterns of brain activity is misleading. It is the very fact that book reading “understimulates the senses” that makes the activity so intellectually rewarding. By allowing us to filter out distractions, to quiet the problem-solving functions of the frontal lobes, deep reading becomes a form of deep thinking. The mind of the experienced book reader is a calm mind, not a buzzing one. When it comes to the firing of our neurons, it’s a mistake to assume that more is better.Read more at location 2025

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What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: we are evolving from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.Read more at location 2288

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As Flynn wrote in his book What Is Intelligence?, “If IQ gains are in any sense real, we are driven to the absurd conclusion that a majority of our ancestors were mentally retarded.”6 The second paradox stems from the disparities in the scores on different sections of IQ tests: “How can people get more intelligent and have no larger vocabularies, no larger stores of general information, no greater ability to solve arithmetical problems?”7 After mulling over the paradoxes for many years, Flynn came to the conclusion that the gains in IQ scores have less to do with an increase in general intelligence than with a transformation in the way people think about intelligence. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, the scientific view of intelligence, with its stress on classification, correlation, and abstract reasoning, remained fairly rare, limited to those who attended or taught at universities. Most people continued to see intelligence as a matter of deciphering the workings of nature and solving practical problems—on the farm, in the factory, at home. Living in a world of substance rather than symbol, they had little cause or opportunity to think about abstract shapes and theoretical classification schemes. But, Flynn realized, that all changed over the course of the last century when, for economic, technological, and educational reasons, abstract reasoning moved into the mainstream. Everyone began to wear, as Flynn colorfully puts it, the same “scientific spectacles” that were worn by the original developers of IQ tests.8 Once he had that insight, Flynn recalled in a 2007 interview, “I began to feel that I was bridging the gulf between our minds and the minds of our ancestors. We weren’t more intelligent than they, but we had learnt to apply our intelligence to a new set of problems. We had detached logic from the concrete, we were willing to deal with the hypothetical, and we thought the world was a place to be classified and understood scientifically rather than to be manipulated.”Read more at location 2410

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Because the sales of complementary products rise in tandem, a company has a strong strategic interest in reducing the cost and expanding the availability of the complements to its main product. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that a company would like all complements to be given away. If hot dogs were free, mustard sales would skyrocket. It’s this natural drive to reduce the cost of complements that, more than anything else, explains Google’s business strategy. Nearly everything the company does is aimed at reducing the cost and expanding the scope of Internet use. Google wants information to be free because, as the cost of information falls, we all spend more time looking at computer screens and the company’s profits go up.Read more at location 2629

B003R7L90I 395012 Note: Add a note

People born into societies that celebrate individual achievement, like the United States, tend, for example, to be able to remember events from earlier in their lives than do people raised in societies that stress communal achievement, such as Korea.Read more at location 3224

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In 2003, a Dutch clinical psychologist named Christof van Nimwegen began a fascinating study of computer-aided learning that a BBC writer would later call “one of the most interesting examinations of current computer use and the potential downsides of our increasing reliance on screen-based interaction with information systems.”26 Van Nimwegen had two groups of volunteers work through a tricky logic puzzle on a computer. The puzzle involved transferring colored balls between two boxes in accordance with a set of rules governing which balls could be moved at which time. One of the groups used software that had been designed to be as helpful as possible. It offered on-screen assistance during the course of solving the puzzle, providing visual cues, for instance, to highlight permitted moves. The other group used a bare-bones program, which provided no hints or other guidance. In the early stages of solving the puzzle, the group using the helpful software made correct moves more quickly than the other group, as would be expected. But as the test proceeded, the proficiency of the members of the group using the bare-bones software increased more rapidly. In the end, those using the unhelpful program were able to solve the puzzle more quickly and with fewer wrong moves. They also reached fewer impasses—states in which no further moves were possible—than did the people using the helpful software. The findings indicated, as van Nimwegen reported, that those using the unhelpful software were better able to plan ahead and plot strategy, while those using the helpful software tended to rely on simple trial and error. Often, in fact, those with the helpful software were found “to aimlessly click around” as they tried to crack the puzzle.Read more at location 3505

B003R7L90I 527583 Note: Add a note

Another recent study, this one on academic research, provides real-world evidence of the way the tools we use to sift information online influence our mental habits and frame our thinking. James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, assembled an enormous database on 34 million scholarly articles published in academic journals from 1945 through 2005. He analyzed the citations included in the articles to see if patterns of citation, and hence of research, have changed as journals have shifted from being printed on paper to being published online. Considering how much easier it is to search digital text than printed text, the common assumption has been that making journals available on the Net would significantly broaden the scope of scholarly research, leading to a much more diverse set of citations. But that’s not at all what Evans discovered. As more journals moved online, scholars actually cited fewer articles than they had before. And as old issues of printed journals were digitized and uploaded to the Web, scholars cited more recent articles with increasing frequency. A broadening of available information led, as Evans described it, to a “narrowing of science and scholarship.”31 In explaining the counterintuitive findings in a 2008 Science article, Evans noted that automated information-filtering tools, such as search engines, tend to serve as amplifiers of popularity, quickly establishing and then continually reinforcing a consensus about what information is important and what isn’t. The ease of following hyperlinks, moreover, leads online researchers to “bypass many of the marginally related articles that print researchers” would routinely skim as they flipped through the pages of a journal or a book. The quicker that scholars are able to “find prevailing opinion,” wrote Evans, the more likely they are “to follow it, leading to more citations referencing fewer articles.” Though much less efficient than searching the Web, old-fashioned library research probably served to widen scholars’ horizons: “By drawing researchers through unrelated articles, print browsing and perusal may have facilitated broader comparisons and led researchers into the past.”32 The easy way may not always be the best way, but the easy way is the way our computers and search engines encourage us to take.Read more at location 3548

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He is drawn back into the Web even though he knows that "the happiest and most fulfilled times of my life have all involved a prolonged separation from the Internet."Read more at location 3695

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This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.Read more at location 259

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a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in.Read more at location 278

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Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight.Read more at location 280

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The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.Read more at location 388

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One of the significant discoveries of cognitive psychologists in recent decades is that switching from one task to another is effortful, especially under time pressure.Read more at location 609

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Like a juggler with several balls in the air, you cannot afford to slow down; the rate at which material decays in memory forces the pace, driving you to refresh and rehearse information before it is lost.Read more at location 618

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“She did not forget about the meeting. She was completely focused on something else when the meeting was set and she just didn’t hear you.”Read more at location 629

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System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth.Read more at location 674

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People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations.Read more at location 675

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Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts.Read more at location 678

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The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions.Read more at location 745

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This experiment has discouraging implications for reasoning in everyday life. It suggests that when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.Read more at location 753

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A significant difference in intellectual aptitude emerged: the children who had shown more self-control as four-year-olds had substantially higher scores on tests of intelligence.Read more at location 791

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you know far less about yourself than you feel you do.Read more at location 876

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Money-primed undergraduates also showed a greater preference for being alone.Read more at location 943

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The general theme of these findings is that the idea of money primes individualism: a reluctance to be involved with others, to depend on others, or to accept demands from others.Read more at location 943

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Evidently, a purely symbolic reminder of being watched prodded people into improved behavior.Read more at location 980

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“The sight of all these people in uniforms does not prime creativity.”Read more at location 989

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Hearing a speaker when you are in a good mood, or even when you have a pencil stuck crosswise in your mouth to make you “smile,” also induces cognitive ease.Read more at location 1008

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When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative than usual.Read more at location 1013

B00555X8OA 152143 Note: Add a note

couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility.Read more at location 1071

B00555X8OA 160757 Note: Add a note

System 2 is lazy and that mental effort is aversive.Read more at location 1084

B00555X8OA 162536 Note: Add a note

How do you know that a statement is true? If it is strongly linked by logic or association to other beliefs or preferences you hold, or comes from a source you trust and like, you will feel a sense of cognitive ease.Read more at location 1089

B00555X8OA 163457 Note: Add a note

You read this correctly: performance was better with the bad font.Read more at location 1112

B00555X8OA 166730 Note: Add a note

Companies with pronounceable names do better than others for the first week after the stock is issued, though the effect disappears over time.Read more at location 1119

B00555X8OA 167971 Note: Add a note

Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty.Read more at location 1141

B00555X8OA 171126 Note: Add a note

creativity is associative memory that works exceptionally well.Read more at location 1152

B00555X8OA 172824 Note: Add a note

Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.Read more at location 1173

B00555X8OA 176057 Note: Add a note

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it.Read more at location 1212

B00555X8OA 181841 Note: Add a note

We have norms for a vast number of categories, and these norms provide the background for the immediate detection of anomalies such as pregnant men and tattooed aristocrats.Read more at location 1265

B00555X8OA 189858 Note: Add a note

System 1, which understands language, has access to norms of categories, which specify the range of plausible values as well as the most typical cases.Read more at location 1271

B00555X8OA 190716 Note: Add a note

a statement that can explain two contradictory outcomes explains nothing at all.Read more at location 1284

B00555X8OA 192605 Note: Add a note

Michotte had a different idea: he argued that we see causality, just as directly as we see color.Read more at location 1300

B00555X8OA 194975 Note: Add a note

Your mind is ready and even eager to identify agents, assign them personality traits and specific intentions, and view their actions as expressing individual propensities.Read more at location 1311

B00555X8OA 196810 Note: Add a note

The prominence of causal intuitions is a recurrent theme in this book because people are prone to apply causal thinking inappropriately, to situations that require statistical reasoning.Read more at location 1323

B00555X8OA 198602 Note: Add a note

“She can’t accept that she was just unlucky; she needs a causal story. She will end up thinking that someone intentionally sabotaged her work.”Read more at location 1338

B00555X8OA 200823 Note: Add a note

In the absence of an explicit context, System 1 generated a likely context on its own.Read more at location 1358

B00555X8OA 203767 Note: Add a note

Gilbert proposed that understanding a statement must begin with an attempt to believe it: you must first know what the idea would mean if it were true.Read more at location 1370

B00555X8OA 205576 Note: Add a note

when System 2 is otherwise engaged, we will believe almost anything.Read more at location 1380

B00555X8OA 206963 Note: Add a note

The tendency to like (or dislike) everything about a person—including things you have not observed—is known as the halo effect.Read more at location 1392

B00555X8OA 208818 Note: Add a note

The uncomfortable inconsistency that was revealed when I switched to the new procedure was real: it reflected both the inadequacy of any single question as a measure of what the student knew and the unreliability of my own grading.Read more at location 1434

B00555X8OA 215274 Note: Add a note

To derive the most useful information from multiple sources of evidence, you should always try to make these sources independent of each other.Read more at location 1444

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The principle of independent judgments (and decorrelated errors) has immediate applications for the conduct of meetings, an activity in which executives in organizations spend a great deal of their working days. A simple rule can help: before an issue is discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. This procedure makes good use of the value of the diversity of knowledge and opinion in the group. The standard practice of open discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and assertively, causing others to line up behind them.Read more at location 1449

B00555X8OA 217896 Note: Add a note

“She knows nothing about this person’s management skills. All she is going by is the halo effect from a good presentation.”Read more at location 1512

B00555X8OA 226809 Note: Add a note

The questions are perhaps less urgent for a human in a city environment than for a gazelle on the savannah, but we have inherited the neural mechanisms that evolved to provide ongoing assessments of threat level, and they have not been turned off.Read more at location 1533

B00555X8OA 230138 Note: Add a note

The almost complete neglect of quantity in such emotional contexts has been confirmed many times.Read more at location 1595

B00555X8OA 239242 Note: Add a note

“Evaluating people as attractive or not is a basic assessment. You do that automatically whether or not you want to, and it influences you.”Read more at location 1645

B00555X8OA 246758 Note: Add a note

Whether you state them or not, you often have answers to questions that you do not completely understand, relying on evidence that you can neither explain nor defend.Read more at location 1657

B00555X8OA 248652 Note: Add a note

We asked ourselves how people manage to make judgments of probability without knowing precisely what probability is. We concluded that people must somehow simplify that impossible task,Read more at location 1666

B00555X8OA 250070 Note: Add a note

The present state of mind looms very large when people evaluate their happiness.Read more at location 1752

B00555X8OA 262794 Note: Add a note

Your emotional attitude to such things as irradiated food, red meat, nuclear power, tattoos, or motorcycles drives your beliefs about their benefits and their risks. If you dislike any of these things, you probably believe that its risks are high and its benefits negligible.Read more at location 1758

B00555X8OA 263944 Note: Add a note

System 2 is more of an apologist for the emotions of System 1 than a critic of those emotions—an endorser rather than an enforcer. Its search for information and arguments is mostly constrained to information that is consistent with existing beliefs, not with an intention to examine them.Read more at location 1768

B00555X8OA 265433 Note: Add a note

even sophisticated researchers have poor intuitions and a wobbly understanding of sampling effects.Read more at location 1852

B00555X8OA 277872 Note: Add a note

The risk of error can be estimated for any given sample size by a fairly simple procedure. Traditionally, however, psychologists do not use calculations to decide on a sample size. They use their judgment, which is commonly flawed.Read more at location 1864

B00555X8OA 279737 Note: Add a note

We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their “statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible.”Read more at location 1883

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Unless you are a professional, however, you may not react very differently to a sample of 150 and to a sample of 3,000. That is the meaning of the statement that “people are not adequately sensitive to sample size.”Read more at location 1891

B00555X8OA 283777 Note: Add a note

System 1 is not prone to doubt. It suppresses ambiguity and spontaneously constructs stories that are as coherent as possible.Read more at location 1899

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The simple answer to these questions is that if you follow your intuition, you will more often than not err by misclassifying a random event as systematic. We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.Read more at location 1953

B00555X8OA 293178 Note: Add a note

The truth is that small schools are not better on average; they are simply more variable.Read more at location 1967

B00555X8OA 295114 Note: Add a note

“I won’t believe that the new trader is a genius before consulting a statistician who could estimate the likelihood of his streak being a chance event.”Read more at location 1978

B00555X8OA 296855 Note: Add a note

The phenomenon we were studying is so common and so important in the everyday world that you should know its name: it is an anchoring effect. It occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity.Read more at location 1993

B00555X8OA 299145 Note: Add a note

Any number that you are asked to consider as a possible solution to an estimation problem will induce an anchoring effect.Read more at location 1999

B00555X8OA 299968 Note: Add a note

My advice to students when I taught negotiations was that if you think the other side has made an outrageous proposal, you should not come back with an equally outrageous counteroffer, creating a gap that will be difficult to bridge in further negotiations. Instead you should make a scene, storm out or threaten to do so, and make it clear—to yourself as well as to the other side—that you will not continue the negotiation with that number on the table.Read more at location 2123

B00555X8OA 318828 Note: Add a note

Anchoring results from this associative activation. Whether the story is true, or believable, matters little, if at all. The powerful effect of random anchors is an extreme case of this phenomenon, because a random anchor obviously provides no information at all.Read more at location 2146

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Many others find the results upsetting, because they threaten the subjective sense of agency and autonomy.Read more at location 2151

B00555X8OA 322713 Note: Add a note

We defined the availability heuristic as the process of judging frequency by “the ease with which instances come to mind.”Read more at location 2177

B00555X8OA 326626 Note: Add a note

when people are instructed to frown while doing a task, they actually try harder and experience greater cognitive strain.Read more at location 2234

B00555X8OA 335143 Note: Add a note

The conclusion is that the ease with which instances come to mind is a System 1 heuristic, which is replaced by a focus on content when System 2 is more engaged. Multiple lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that people who let themselves be guided by System 1 are more strongly susceptible to availability biases than others who are in a state of higher vigilance. The following are some conditions in which people “go withRead more at location 2278

B00555X8OA 342052 Note: Add a note

The lesson is clear: estimates of causes of death are warped by media coverage. The coverage is itself biased toward novelty and poignancy.Read more at location 2319

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human judgment of risk than any other individual. His work offers a picture of Mr. and Ms. Citizen that is far from flattering: guided by emotion rather than by reason, easily swayed by trivial details, and inadequately sensitive to differences between low and negligibly low probabilities. Slovic has also studied experts, who are clearly superior in dealing with numbers and amounts. Experts show many of the same biases as the rest of us in attenuated form, but often their judgments and preferences about risks diverge from those of other people.Read more at location 2353

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the attribute of intellectual fearlessness. He knows he can master any body of knowledge quickly and thoroughly, and he has mastered many, including both the psychology of judgment and choice and issues of regulation and risk policy.Read more at location 2377

B00555X8OA 356751 Note: Add a note

Even in countries that have been targets of intensive terror campaigns, such as Israel, the weekly number of casualties almost never came close to the number of traffic deaths.Read more at location 2428

B00555X8OA 364343 Note: Add a note

When an incorrect intuitive judgment is made, System 1 and System 2 should both be indicted. System 1 suggested the incorrect intuition, and System 2 endorsed it and expressed it in a judgment.Read more at location 2571

B00555X8OA 385785 Note: Add a note

Unless you decide immediately to reject evidence (for example, by determining that you received it from a liar), your System 1 will automatically process the information available as if it were true.Read more at location 2582

B00555X8OA 387368 Note: Add a note

When you specify a possible event in greater detail you can only lower its probability. The problem therefore sets up a conflict between the intuition of representativeness and the logic of probability.Read more at location 2641

B00555X8OA 396309 Note: Add a note

The word fallacy is used, in general, when people fail to apply a logical rule that is obviously relevant.Read more at location 2667

B00555X8OA 400166 Note: Add a note

The social norm against stereotyping, including the opposition to profiling, has been highly beneficial in creating a more civilized and more equal society. It is useful to remember, however, that neglecting valid stereotypes inevitably results in suboptimal judgments. Resistance to stereotyping is a laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the resistance is costless is wrong. The costs are worth paying to achieve a better society, but denying that the costs exist, while satisfying to the soul and politically correct, is not scientifically defensible. Reliance on the affect heuristic is common in politically charged arguments. The positions we favor have no cost and those we oppose have no benefits. We should be able to do better.Read more at location 2860

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supports the uncomfortable conclusion that teaching psychology is mostly a waste of time.Read more at location 2887

B00555X8OA 433136 Note: Add a note

In the absence of useful new information, the Bayesian solution is to stay with the base rates.Read more at location 2925

B00555X8OA 438840 Note: Add a note

In the words of Nisbett and Borgida, students “quietly exempt themselves” (and their friends and acquaintances) from the conclusions of experiments that surprise them.Read more at location 2941

B00555X8OA 441251 Note: Add a note

Subjects’ unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular.Read more at location 2950

B00555X8OA 442560 Note: Add a note

People who are taught surprising statistical facts about human behavior may be impressed to the point of telling their friends about what they have heard, but this does not mean that their understanding of the world has really changed.Read more at location 2952

B00555X8OA 442900 Note: Add a note

That is why this book contains questions that are addressed personally to the reader. You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.Read more at location 2958

B00555X8OA 443795 Note: Add a note

Because we tend to be nice to other people when they please us and nasty when they do not, we are statistically punished for being nice and rewarded for being nasty.Read more at location 2992

B00555X8OA 448840 Note: Add a note

The fact that you observe regression when you predict an early event from a later event should help convince you that regression does not have a causal explanation.Read more at location 3024

B00555X8OA 453617 Note: Add a note

The experiments showed further that the mean filial regression towards mediocrity was directly proportional to the parental deviation from it.Read more at location 3048

B00555X8OA 457260 Note: Add a note

It took Francis Galton several years to figure out that correlation and regression are not two concepts—they are different perspectives on the same concept.Read more at location 3078

B00555X8OA 461786 Note: Add a note

statistician David Freedman used to say that if the topic of regression comes up in a criminal or civil trial, the side that must explain regression to the jury will lose the case. Why is it so hard? The main reason for the difficulty is a recurrent theme of this book: our mind is strongly biased toward causal explanations and does not deal well with “mere statistics.”Read more at location 3092

B00555X8OA 464180 Note: Add a note

Depressed children are an extreme group, they are more depressed than most other children—and extreme groups regress to the mean over time.Read more at location 3110

B00555X8OA 466574 Note: Add a note

As was the case with Julie, the prediction of the future is not distinguished from an evaluation of current evidence—prediction matches evaluation.Read more at location 3210

B00555X8OA 481554 Note: Add a note

Intuitive predictions need to be corrected because they are not regressive and therefore are biased.Read more at location 3249

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Similarly, if you use childhood achievements to predict grades in college without regressing your predictions toward the mean, you will more often than not be disappointed by the academic outcomes of early readers and happily surprised by the grades of those who learned to read relatively late.Read more at location 3253

B00555X8OA 488197 Note: Add a note

The two procedures are intended to address the same bias: intuitive predictions tend to be overconfident and overly extreme.Read more at location 3272

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If you expect your predictions to be of modest validity, you will never guess an outcome that is either rare or far from the mean.Read more at location 3277

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Similarly, rational individuals predicting the revenue of a firm will not be bound to a single number—they should consider the range of uncertainty around the most likely outcome.Read more at location 3293

B00555X8OA 494041 Note: Add a note

Any recent salient event is a candidate to become the kernel of a causal narrative.Read more at location 3342

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we humans constantly fool ourselves by constructing flimsy accounts of the past and believing they are true.Read more at location 3343

B00555X8OA 501505 Note: Add a note

You are always ready to interpret behavior as a manifestation of general propensities and personality traits—causes that you can readily match to effects.Read more at location 3345

B00555X8OA 501777 Note: Add a note

The ultimate test of an explanation is whether it would have made the event predictable in advance.Read more at location 3364

B00555X8OA 504637 Note: Add a note

You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it.Read more at location 3376

B00555X8OA 506482 Note: Add a note

We can know something only if it is both true and knowable.Read more at location 3383

B00555X8OA 507459 Note: Add a note

To think clearly about the future, we need to clean up the language that we use in labeling the beliefs we had in the past.Read more at location 3392

B00555X8OA 508826 Note: Add a note

A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed.Read more at location 3398

B00555X8OA 509760 Note: Add a note

The tendency to revise the history of one’s beliefs in light of what actually happened produces a robust cognitive illusion.Read more at location 3415

B00555X8OA 512372 Note: Add a note

The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future. These illusions are comforting. They reduce the anxiety that we would experience if we allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge the uncertainties of existence.Read more at location 3447

B00555X8OA 517181 Note: Add a note

stories of success and failure consistently exaggerate the impact of leadership style and management practices on firm outcomes, and thus their message is rarely useful.Read more at location 3473

B00555X8OA 520995 Note: Add a note

In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.Read more at location 3491

B00555X8OA 523585 Note: Add a note

Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.Read more at location 3572

B00555X8OA 536147 Note: Add a note

Facts that challenge such basic assumptions—and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem—are simply not absorbed.Read more at location 3647

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Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?Read more at location 3693

B00555X8OA 554008 Note: Add a note

The results were devastating. The experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply assigned equal probabilities to each of the three potential outcomes. In other words, people who spend their time, and earn their living, studying a particular topic produce poorer predictions than dart-throwing monkeys who would have distributed their choices evenly over the options. Even in the region they knew best, experts were not significantly better than nonspecialists.Read more at location 3701

B00555X8OA 555529 Note: Add a note

The reason is that the person who acquires more knowledge develops an enhanced illusion of her skill and becomes unrealistically overconfident.Read more at location 3705

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The more famous the forecaster, Tetlock discovered, the more flamboyant the forecasts. “Experts in demand,” he writes, “were more overconfident than their colleagues who eked out existences far from the limelight.”Read more at location 3709

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About 60% of the studies have shown significantly better accuracy for the algorithms. The other comparisons scored a draw in accuracy, but a tie is tantamount to a win for the statistical rules, which are normally much less expensive to use than expert judgment. No exception has been convincingly documented.Read more at location 3762

B00555X8OA 564551 Note: Add a note

Complexity may work in the odd case, but more often than not it reduces validity. Simple combinations of features are better.Read more at location 3788

B00555X8OA 568254 Note: Add a note

According to Meehl, there are few circumstances under which it is a good idea to substitute judgment for a formula.Read more at location 3791

B00555X8OA 568664 Note: Add a note

Experienced radiologists who evaluate chest X-rays as “normal” or “abnormal” contradict themselves 20% of the time when they see the same picture on separate occasions.Read more at location 3796

B00555X8OA 569563 Note: Add a note

Meehl and other proponents of algorithms have argued strongly that it is unethical to rely on intuitive judgments for important decisions if an algorithm is available that will make fewer mistakes.Read more at location 3876

B00555X8OA 581513 Note: Add a note

intuition adds value even in the justly derided selection interview, but only after a disciplined collection of objective information and disciplined scoring of separate traits.Read more at location 3928

B00555X8OA 589376 Note: Add a note

A more general lesson that I learned from this episode was do not simply trust intuitive judgment—your own or that of others—but do not dismiss it, either.Read more at location 3931

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A vast amount of research offers a promise: you are much more likely to find the best candidate if you use this procedure than if you do what people normally do in such situations, which is to go into the interview unprepared and to make choices by an overall intuitive judgment such as “I looked into his eyes and liked what I saw.”Read more at location 3949

B00555X8OA 592580 Note: Add a note

“Whenever we can replace human judgment by a formula, we should at least consider it.”Read more at location 3952

B00555X8OA a3MXBRLD88W8KC 592888 Note: i outta add AI as a basis if not ultimate goal Edit

the confidence that people have in their intuitions is not a reliable guide to their validity. In other words, do not trust anyone—including yourself—to tell you how much you should trust their judgment.Read more at location 4065

B00555X8OA 609865 Note: Add a note

Some environments are worse than irregular. Robin Hogarth described “wicked” environments, in which professionals are likely to learn the wrong lessons from experience. He borrows from Lewis Thomas the example of a physician in the early twentieth century who often had intuitions about patients who were about to develop typhoid. Unfortunately, he tested his hunch by palpating the patient’s tongue, without washing his hands between patients. When patient after patient became ill, the physician developed a sense of clinical infallibility. His predictions were accurate—but not because he was exercising professional intuition!Read more at location 4075

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Remember this rule: intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment.Read more at location 4091

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Whether professionals have a chance to develop intuitive expertise depends essentially on the quality and speed of feedback, as well as on sufficient opportunity to practice.Read more at location 4099

B00555X8OA 614948 Note: Add a note

the proper way to elicit information from a group is not by starting with a public discussion but by confidentially collecting each person’s judgment.Read more at location 4166

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This is a common pattern: people who have information about an individual case rarely feel the need to know the statistics of the class to which the case belongs.Read more at location 4233

B00555X8OA 635001 Note: Add a note

If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism.Read more at location 4337

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Overall, the return on private invention was small, “lower than the return on private equity and on high-risk securities.” More generally, the financial benefits of self-employment are mediocre: given the same qualifications, people achieve higher average returns by selling their skills to employers than by setting out on their own. The evidence suggests that optimism is widespread, stubborn, and costly.Read more at location 4374

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The damage caused by overconfident CEOs is compounded when the business press anoints them as celebrities; the evidence indicates that prestigious press awards to the CEO are costly to stockholders. The authors write, “We find that firms with award-winning CEOs subsequently underperform, in terms both of stock and of operating performance. At the same time, CEO compensation increases, CEOs spend more time on activities outside the company such as writing books and sitting on outside boards, and they are more likely to engage in earnings management.”Read more at location 4389

B00555X8OA 658840 Note: Add a note

people tend to be overly optimistic about their relative standing on any activity in which they do moderately well.Read more at location 4421

B00555X8OA 663219 Note: Add a note

The consequence of competition neglect is excess entry: more competitors enter the market than the market can profitably sustain, so their average outcome is a loss.Read more at location 4438

B00555X8OA 665796 Note: Add a note

He labels his proposal the premortem. The procedure is simple: when the organization has almost come to an important decision but has not formally committed itself, Klein proposes gathering for a brief session a group of individuals who are knowledgeable about the decision. The premise of the session is a short speech: “Imagine that we are a year into the future. We implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Please take 5 to 10 minutes to write a brief history of that disaster.”Read more at location 4502

B00555X8OA 675815 Note: Add a note

Bernoulli’s insight was that a decision maker with diminishing marginal utility for wealth will be risk averse.Read more at location 4619

B00555X8OA 692823 Note: Add a note

The poorer man will happily pay a premium to transfer the risk to the richer one, which is what insurance is about.Read more at location 4625

B00555X8OA 693717 Note: Add a note

You know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious.Read more at location 4699

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Raising questions about these assumptions even as they are introduced would be confusing, and perhaps demoralizing. It is reasonable to put priority on helping students acquire the basic tools of the discipline.Read more at location 4829

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Humans described by prospect theory are guided by the immediate emotional impact of gains and losses, not by long-term prospects of wealth and global utility.Read more at location 4832

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Richer and more realistic assumptions do not suffice to make a theory successful. Scientists use theories as a bag of working tools, and they will not take on the burden of a heavier bag unless the new tools are very useful.Read more at location 4860

B00555X8OA 729177 Note: Add a note

Here again, the power and elegance of a theoretical model have blinded students and scholars to a serious deficiency. What is missing from the figure is an indication of the individual’s current income and leisure. If you are a salaried employee, the terms of your employment specify a salary and a number of vacation days, which is a point on the map. This is your reference point, your status quo, but the figure does not show it. By failing to display it, the theorists who draw this figure invite you to believe that the reference point does not matter, but by now you know that of course it does. This is Bernoulli’s error all over again. The representation of indifference curves implicitly assumes that your utility at any given moment is determined entirely by your present situation, that the past is irrelevant, and that your evaluation of a possible job does not depend on the terms of your current job. These assumptions are completely unrealistic in this case and in many others.Read more at location 4883

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For example, the minimal wage that unemployed workers would accept for new employment averages 90% of their previous wage, and it drops by less than 10% over a period of one year.Read more at location 4896

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This example highlights two aspects of choice that the standard model of indifference curves does not predict. First, tastes are not fixed; they vary with the reference point. Second, the disadvantages of a change loom larger than its advantages, inducing a bias that favors the status quo. Of course, loss aversion does not imply that you never prefer to change your situation; the benefits of an opportunity may exceed even overweighted losses. Loss aversion implies only that choices are strongly biased in favor of the reference situation (and generally biased to favor small rather than large changes).Read more at location 4914

B00555X8OA 737591 Note: Add a note

The fundamental ideas of prospect theory are that reference points exist, and that losses loom larger than corresponding gains.Read more at location 5010

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In an exact replication of Jack Knetsch’s earlier experiment, List found that only 18% of the inexperienced traders were willing to exchange their gift for the other. In sharp contrast, experienced traders showed no trace of an endowment effect: 48% of them traded! At least in a market environment in which trading was the norm, they showed no reluctance to trade.Read more at location 5025

B00555X8OA 754056 Note: Add a note

The psychologist Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.Read more at location 5088

B00555X8OA 763335 Note: Add a note

Pope and Schweitzer reasoned from loss aversion that players would try a little harder when putting for par (to avoid a bogey) than when putting for a birdie. They analyzed more than 2.5 million putts in exquisite detail to test that prediction.Read more at location 5121

B00555X8OA 768325 Note: Add a note

When threatened, it is not unfair for the firm to be selfish.Read more at location 5187

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The important task for students of economic fairness is not to identify ideal behavior but to find the line that separates acceptable conduct from actions that invite opprobrium and punishment.Read more at location 5192

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Employers who violate rules of fairness are punished by reduced productivity, and merchants who follow unfair pricing policies can expect to lose sales. People who learned from a new catalog that the merchant was now charging less for a product that they had recently bought at a higher price reduced their future purchases from that supplier by 15%, an average loss of $90 per customer. The customers evidently perceived the lower price as the reference point and thought of themselves as having sustained a loss by paying more than appropriate. Moreover, the customers who reacted the most strongly were those who bought more items and at higher prices. The losses far exceeded the gains from the increased purchases produced by the lower prices in the new catalog.Read more at location 5200

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Altruistic punishment could well be the glue that holds societies together. However, our brains are not designed to reward generosity as reliably as they punish meanness. Here again, we find a marked asymmetry between losses and gains.Read more at location 5209

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“This reform will not pass. Those who stand to lose will fight harder than those who stand to gain.”Read more at location 5219

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“My clients don’t resent the price hike because they know my costs have gone up, too. They accept my right to stay profitable.”Read more at location 5226

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If such an event actually happens in your life, you should know that a large industry of “structured settlements” exists to provide certainty at a hefty price, by taking advantage of the certainty effect.Read more at location 5261

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Because of the possibility effect, we tend to overweight small risks and are willing to pay far more than expected value to eliminate them altogether.Read more at location 5264

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As often happens when a theory that has been widely adopted and found useful is challenged, they noted the problem as an anomaly and continued using expected utility theory as if nothing had happened.Read more at location 5303

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A lottery ticket is the ultimate example of the possibility effect. Without a ticket you cannot win, with a ticket you have a chance, and whether the chance is tiny or merely small matters little. Of course, what people acquire with a ticket is more than a chance to win; it is the right to dream pleasantly of winning.Read more at location 5364

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Plaintiffs with frivolous claims are likely to obtain a more generous settlement than the statistics of the situation justify.Read more at location 5414

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You can empathize in each case with the feelings of the plaintiff and the defendant that lead them to adopt a combative or an accommodating posture. In the long run, however, deviations from expected value are likely to be costly.Read more at location 5415

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systematic deviations from expected value are costly in the long run—and this rule applies to both risk aversion and risk seeking. Consistent overweighting of improbable outcomes—a feature of intuitive decision making—eventually leads to inferior outcomes.Read more at location 5423

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Buying a ticket is immediately rewarded by pleasant fantasies, just as avoiding a bus was immediately rewarded by relief from fear. In both cases, the actual probability is inconsequential; only possibility matters.Read more at location 5454

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Because you were in confirmatory mode, there is a good chance that your estimate of the frequency of problems was too high.Read more at location 5482

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Their finding was that the valuation of gambles was much less sensitive to probability when the (fictitious) outcomes were emotional (“meeting and kissing your favorite movie star” or “getting a painful, but not dangerous, electric shock”) than when the outcomes were gains or losses of cash.Read more at location 5513

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researchers had found, using physiological measures such as heart rate, that the fear of an impending electric shock was essentially uncorrelated with the probability of receiving the shock. The mere possibility of a shock triggered the full-blown fear response.Read more at location 5515

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People who thought of the gift as a chance to get roses did not use price information as an anchor in evaluating the gamble. As scientists sometimes say, this is a surprising finding that is trying to tell us something. What story is it trying to tell us? The story, I believe, is that a rich and vivid representation of the outcome, whether or not it is emotional, reduces the role of probability in the evaluation of an uncertain prospect.Read more at location 5537

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As predicted by denominator neglect, low-probability events are much more heavily weighted when described in terms of relative frequencies (how many) than when stated in more abstract terms of “chances,” “risk,” or “probability” (how likely). As we have seen, System 1 is much better at dealing with individuals than categories.Read more at location 5568

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The more vivid description produces a higher decision weight for the same probability.Read more at location 5585

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When it comes to rare probabilities, our mind is not designed to get things quite right. For the residents of a planet that may be exposed to events no one has yet experienced, this is not good news.Read more at location 5641

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“We shouldn’t focus on a single scenario, or we will overestimate its probability. Let’s set up specific alternatives and make the probabilities add up to 100%.”Read more at location 5647

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Broad framing was obviously superior in this case. Indeed, it will be superior (or at least not inferior) in every case in which several decisions are to be contemplated together.Read more at location 5683

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The combination of loss aversion and narrow framing is a costly curse. Individual investors can avoid that curse, achieving the emotional benefits of broad framing while also saving time and agony, by reducing the frequency with which they check how well their investments are doing. Closely following daily fluctuations is a losing proposition, because the pain of the frequent small losses exceeds the pleasure of the equally frequent small gains. Once a quarter is enough, and may be more than enough for individual investors. In addition to improving the emotional quality of life, the deliberate avoidance of exposure to short-term outcomes improves the quality of both decisions and outcomes.Read more at location 5742

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Investors who get aggregated feedback receive such news much less often and are likely to be less risk averse and to end up richer.Read more at location 5748

B00555X8OA 862184 Note: Add a note

Decision makers who are prone to narrow framing construct a preference every time they face a risky choice. They would do better by having a risk policy that they routinely apply whenever a relevant problem arises.Read more at location 5752

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“Each of our executives is loss averse in his or her domain. That’s perfectly natural, but the result is that the organization is not taking enough risk.”Read more at location 5777

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Except for the very poor, for whom income coincides with survival, the main motivators of money-seeking are not necessarily economic.Read more at location 5781

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A rational agent would have a comprehensive view of the portfolio and sell the stock that is least likely to do well in the future, without considering whether it is a winner or a loser.Read more at location 5823

B00555X8OA 873601 Note: Add a note

In the presence of sunk costs, the manager’s incentives are misaligned with the objectives of the firm and its shareholders, a familiar type of what is known as the agency problem. Boards of directors are well aware of these conflicts and often replace a CEO who is encumbered by prior decisions and reluctant to cut losses. The members of the board do not necessarily believe that the new CEO is more competent than the one she replaces. They do know that she does not carry the same mental accounts and is therefore better able to ignore the sunk costs of past investments in evaluating current opportunities.Read more at location 5850

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The sunk-cost fallacy keeps people for too long in poor jobs, unhappy marriages, and unpromising research projects.Read more at location 5854

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The sunk-cost fallacy is identified and taught as a mistake in both economics and business courses, apparently to good effect: there is evidence that graduate students in these fields are more willing than others to walk away from a failing project.Read more at location 5857

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Regret is an emotion, and it is also a punishment that we administer to ourselves.Read more at location 5859

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people expect to have stronger emotional reactions (including regret) to an outcome that is produced by action than to the same outcome when it is produced by inaction.Read more at location 5891

B00555X8OA 883798 Note: Add a note

Losses are weighted about twice as much as gains in several contexts:Read more at location 5913

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You can also take precautions that will inoculate you against regret. Perhaps the most useful is to be explicit about the anticipation of regret. If you can remember when things go badly that you considered the possibility of regret carefully before deciding, you are likely to experience less of it. You should also know that regret and hindsight bias will come together, so anything you can do to preclude hindsight is likely to be helpful. My personal hindsight-avoiding policy is to be either very thorough or completely casual when making a decision with long-term consequences. Hindsight is worse when you think a little, just enough to tell yourself later, “I almost made a better choice.”Read more at location 5962

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The emotional reactions of System 1 are much more likely to determine single evaluation; the comparison that occurs in joint evaluation always involves a more careful and effortful assessment, which calls for System 2.Read more at location 6020

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When the dictionaries are presented in single evaluation, dictionary A is valued more highly, but of course the preference changes in joint evaluation. The result illustrates Hsee’s evaluability hypothesis: The number of entries is given no weight in single evaluation, because the numbers are not “evaluable” on their own. In joint evaluation, in contrast, it is immediately obvious that dictionary B is superior on this attribute, and it is also apparent that the number of entries is far more important than the condition of the cover.Read more at location 6110

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When the cases were considered together, however, sympathy for the individual victim prevailed over the anchoring effect and the jurors increased the award to the child to surpass the award to the bank. Averaging over several such pairs of cases, awards to victims of personal injury were more than twice as large in joint than in single evaluation. The jurors who saw the case of the burned child on its own made an offer that matched the intensity of their feelings. They could not anticipate that the award to the child would appear inadequate in the context of a large award to a financial institution. In joint evaluation, the punitive award to the bank remained anchored on the loss it had sustained, but the award to the burned child increased, reflecting the outrage evoked by negligence that causes injury to a child.Read more at location 6125

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As in the other examples in this chapter, you can see the absurdity only when the two cases are viewed together in a broad frame. The system of administrative penalties is coherent within agencies but incoherent globally.Read more at location 6146

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“It is often the case that when you broaden the frame, you reach more reasonable decisions.”Read more at location 6152

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“When you see cases in isolation, you are likely to be guided by an emotional reaction of System 1.”Read more at location 6154

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The one-month survival rate is 90%. There is 10% mortality in the first month. You already know the results: surgery was much more popular in the former frame (84% of physicians chose it) than in the latter (where 50% favored radiation). The logical equivalence of the two descriptions is transparent, and a reality-bound decision maker would make the same choice regardless of which version she saw. But System 1, as we have gotten to know it, is rarely indifferent to emotional words: mortality is bad, survival is good, and 90% survival sounds encouraging whereas 10% mortality is frightening. An important finding of the study is that physicians were just as susceptible to the framing effect as medically unsophisticated people (hospital patients and graduate students in a business school). Medical training is, evidently, no defense against the power of framing.Read more at location 6225

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Reframing is effortful and System 2 is normally lazy. Unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of us passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.Read more at location 6237

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Decision makers tend to prefer the sure thing over the gamble (they are risk averse) when the outcomes are good. They tend to reject the sure thing and accept the gamble (they are risk seeking) when both outcomes are negative. These conclusions were well established for choices about gambles and sure things in the domain of money. The disease problem shows that the same rule applies when the outcomes are measured in lives saved or lost. In this context, as well, the framing experiment reveals that risk-averse and risk-seeking preferences are not reality-bound. Preferences between the same objective outcomes reverse with different formulations.Read more at location 6253

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Broader frames and inclusive accounts generally lead to more rational decisions.Read more at location 6312

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The five-year interval between the publication of “The MPG Illusion” and the implementation of a partial correction is probably a speed record for a significant application of psychological science to public policy.Read more at location 6332

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The best single predictor of whether or not people will donate their organs is the designation of the default option that will be adopted without having to check a box.Read more at location 6341

B00555X8OA 951253 Note: Add a note

If the objective is to reduce patients’ memory of pain, lowering the peak intensity of pain could be more important than minimizing the duration of the procedure. By the same reasoning, gradual relief may be preferable to abrupt relief if patients retain a better memory when the pain at the end of the procedure is relatively mild. If the objective is to reduce the amount of pain actually experienced, conducting the procedure swiftly may be appropriate even if doing so increases the peak pain intensity and leaves patients with an awful memory.Read more at location 6431

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Of course, half the participants had the short trial with the left hand, half with the right; half had the short trial first, half began with the long, etc. This was a carefully controlled experiment.Read more at location 6465

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If the decision utility does not correspond to the experienced utility, then something is wrong with the decision.Read more at location 6501

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The results provided clear evidence of both duration neglect and a peak-end effect. In a between-subjects experiment (different participants saw different forms), doubling the duration of Jen’s life had no effect whatsoever on the desirability of her life, or on judgments of the total happiness that Jen experienced. Clearly, her life was represented by a prototypical slice of time, not as a sequence of time slices. As a consequence, her “total happiness” was the happiness of a typical period in her lifetime, not the sum (or integral) of happiness over the duration of her life. As expected from this idea, Diener and his students also found a less-is-more effect, a strong indication that an average (prototype) has been substituted for a sum. Adding 5 “slightly happy” years to a very happy life caused aRead more at location 6551

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The mood of the moment depends primarily on the current situation. Mood at work, for example, is largely unaffected by the factors that influence general job satisfaction, including benefits and status. More important are situational factors such as an opportunity to socialize with coworkers, exposure to loud noise, time pressure (a significant source of negative affect), and the immediate presence of a boss (in our first study, the only thing that was worse than being alone).Read more at location 6671

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To get pleasure from eating, for example, you must notice that you are doing it. We found that French and American women spent about the same amount of time eating, but for Frenchwomen, eating was twice as likely to be focal as it was for American women. The Americans were far more prone to combine eating with other activities, and their pleasure from eating was correspondingly diluted.Read more at location 6678

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These observations have implications for both individuals and society. The use of time is one of the areas of life over which people have some control. Few individuals can will themselves to have a sunnier disposition, but some may be able to arrange their lives to spend less of their day commuting, and more time doing things they enjoy with people they like. The feelings associated with different activities suggest that another way to improve experience is to switch time from passive leisure, such as TV watching, to more active forms of leisure, including socializing and exercise. From the social perspective, improved transportation for the labor force, availability of child care for working women, and improved socializing opportunities for the elderly may be relatively efficient ways to reduce the U-index of society—even a reduction by 1% would be a significant achievement, amounting to millions of hours of avoided suffering. Combined national surveys of time use and of experienced well-being can inform social policy in multiple ways.Read more at location 6680

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Not surprisingly, a headache will make a person miserable, and the second best predictor of the feelings of a day is whether a person did or did not have contacts with friends or relatives. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.Read more at location 6693

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Some aspects of life have more effect on the evaluation of one’s life than on the experience of living. Educational attainment is an example. More education is associated with higher evaluation of one’s life, but not with greater experienced well-being. Indeed, at least in the United States, the more educated tend to report higher stress.Read more at location 6700

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Surprisingly, however, religion provides no reduction of feelings of depression or worry.Read more at location 6706

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The satiation level beyond which experienced well-being no longer increases was a household income of about $75,000 in high-cost areas (it could be less in areas where the cost of living is lower). The average increase of experienced well-being associated with incomes beyond that level was precisely zero.Read more at location 6714

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“The objective of policy should be to reduce human suffering. We aim for a lower U-index in society. Dealing with depression and extreme poverty should be a priority.”Read more at location 6725

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“The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time. Can you find more time to do the things you enjoy doing?”Read more at location 6727

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In another well-known experiment in the same vein, Norbert Schwarz and his colleagues invited subjects to the lab to complete a questionnaire on life satisfaction. Before they began that task, however, he asked them to photocopy a sheet of paper for him. Half the respondents found a dime on the copying machine, planted there by the experimenter. The minor lucky incident caused a marked improvement in subjects’ reported satisfaction with their life as a whole!Read more at location 6752

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Figure 16 can be read as a graph of the likelihood that people will think of their recent or forthcoming marriage when asked about their life. The salience of this thought is bound to diminish with the passage of time, as its novelty wanes.Read more at location 6764

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Unless they think happy thoughts about their marriage during much of their day, it will not directly influence their happiness.Read more at location 6770

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A disposition for well-being is as heritable as height or intelligence, as demonstrated by studies of twins separated at birth.Read more at location 6780

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The focusing illusion can cause people to be wrong about their present state of well-being as well as about the happiness of others, and about their own happiness in the future.Read more at location 6850

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Adaptation to a new situation, whether good or bad, consists in large part of thinking less and less about it. In that sense, most long-term circumstances of life, including paraplegia and marriage, are part-time states that one inhabits only when one attends to them.Read more at location 6861

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We can expect the life satisfaction of paraplegics and those afflicted by other chronic and burdensome conditions to be low relative to their experienced well-being, because the request to evaluate their lives will inevitably remind them of the life of others and of the life they used to lead. Consistent with this idea, recent studies of colostomy patients have produced dramatic inconsistencies between the patients’ experienced well-being and their evaluations of their lives. Experience sampling shows no difference in experienced happiness between these patients and a healthy population. Yet colostomy patients would be willing to trade away years of their life for a shorter life without the colostomy. Furthermore, patients whose colostomy has been reversed remember their time in this condition as awful, and they would give up even more of their remaining life not to have to return to it. Here it appears that the remembering self is subject to a massive focusing illusion about the life that the experiencing self endures quite comfortably.Read more at location 6872

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The focusing illusion creates a bias in favor of goods and experiences that are initially exciting, even if they will eventually lose their appeal. Time is neglected, causing experiences that will retain their attention value in the long term to be appreciated less than they deserve to be.Read more at location 6887

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“Buying a larger house may not make us happier in the long term. We could be suffering from a focusing illusion.”Read more at location 6909

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It is a good sign that some of these recommendations have encountered significant opposition from firms whose profits might suffer if their customers were better informed. A world in which firms compete by offering better products is preferable to one in which the winner is the firm that is best at obfuscation.Read more at location 7015

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Save More Tomorrow is a financial plan that firms can offer their employees. Those who sign on allow the employer to increase their contribution to their saving plan by a fixed proportion whenever they receive a raise. The increased saving rate is implemented automatically until the employee gives notice that she wants to opt out of it. This brilliant innovation, proposed by Richard Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi in 2003, has now improved the savings rate and brightened the future prospects of millions of workers. It is soundly based in the psychological principles that readers of this book will recognize. It avoids the resistance to an immediate loss by requiring no immediate change; by tying increased saving to pay raises, it turns losses into foregone gains, which are much easier to bear; and the feature of automaticity aligns the laziness of System 2 with the long-term interests of the workers.Read more at location 7019

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Evidently, people respond differently when given no evidence and when given worthless evidence. When no specific evidence is given, prior probabilities are properly utilized; when worthless evidence is given, prior probabilities are ignored.Read more at location 7167

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The failure to recognize the import of regression can have pernicious consequences, as illustrated by the following observation.12 In a discussion of flight training, experienced instructors noted that praise for an exceptionally smooth landing is typically followed by a poorer landing on the next try, while harsh criticism after a rough landing is usually followed by an improvement on the next try. The instructors concluded that verbal rewards are detrimental to learning, while verbal punishments are beneficial, contrary to accepted psychological doctrine. This conclusion is unwarranted because of the presence of regression toward the mean. As in other cases of repeated examination, an improvement will usually follow a poor performance and a deterioration will usually follow an outstanding performance, even if the instructor does not respond to the trainee’s achievement on the first attempt. Because the instructors had praised their trainees after good landings and admonished them after poor ones, they reached the erroneous and potentially harmful conclusion that punishment is more effective than reward.Read more at location 7266

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Note that the overall probability of a conjunctive event is lower than the probability of each elementary event, whereas the overall probability of a disjunctive event is higher than the probability of each elementary event. As a consequence of anchoring, the overall probability will be overestimated in conjunctive problems and underestimated in disjunctive problems.Read more at location 7381

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The faster way is to do anything that increases brain activity, especially different types of brain activity. The things on the previous page are a big part of the solution, and they’re all things that have been proven to help your brain work in your favor. For example, studies show that putting words within the pictures they describe (as opposed to somewhere else in the page, like a caption or in the body text) causes your brain to try to makes sense of how the words and picture relate, and this causes more neurons to fire. More neurons firing = more chances for your brain to get that this is something worth paying attention to, and possibly recording.Read more at location 576

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The large number of acknowledgments is because we’re testing the theory that everyone mentioned in a book acknowledgment will buy at least one copy, probably more, what with relatives and everything. If you’d like to be in the acknowledgment of our next book, and you have a large family, write to us.Read more at location 753

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a training stress needs to be relevant to the performance being trained for to elicit an adaptation that improves this particular performance. The theory holds that the body can go through three possibleRead more at location 436

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The bottom line is that no one wants to be in stage 3, which we call “overtraining.”Read more at location 485

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Improvement requires, by definition, change. So a changing stress is inherent in effective training.Read more at location 498

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In the hours and days after the training session, performance abilities will recover to normal and then performance ability will exceed the pre-stress level. This is supercompensation, the process by which the body readies itself for a potentially greater stress than the one for which it was already prepared, and which it has already successfully accomplished.Read more at location 526

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An average of eight hours of sleep, especially during very rigorous training, will aid in recovery. After all, the purpose of sleep is to induce a state of recovery in the body. The longer the period of sleep, the better the quality of recovery.Read more at location 694

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It is important to note that there is absolutely no evidence to support the notion that “excessive” amounts of protein are harmful to normal kidneys with unimpaired excretory function, despite the ill-informed advice of some health-care professionals. In fact, in people without active kidney disease there are no unsafe levels of protein consumption in the context of dietary intake.Read more at location 730

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The quality of the diet should be as high as the resources of the trainee permit.Read more at location 751

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Increasing hydration levels within the cell is one of the ways creatine supplementation works to increase skeletal muscle hypertrophy.Read more at location 785

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processing typically reduces the vitamin and mineral content of food to the extent that the quality of the diet – even though sufficient in calories and maybe even protein – is quite low.Read more at location 838

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Since strength is more trainable than power, and since strength can be developed for many years to a very high level, strength development is more important to the athlete who needs to display that strength quickly.Read more at location 1043

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But bigger muscles also mean more efficient leverage around important joints. Knees, elbows, hips, and shoulders work better when the muscles that operate them are larger, since the angle at which the muscles cross the joint is more mechanically efficient for the joint’s lever system: the steeper the angle of attack that the tendon has on the bone, the more efficient the pull. Big quads thus work better than small quads, both because they are stronger in terms of cross-sectional area and because at least a portion of the muscle mass is positioned to extend the knee more efficiently.Read more at location 1084

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The amount of force a muscle can potentially exert is generally considered to be proportional to its cross-sectional area.Read more at location 1251

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the standing vertical jump (SVJ) is the gold-standard for measuring neuromuscular efficiency. Its value lies in its diagnostic ability – it is not very trainable, and as such it is a very good test of genetic potential for explosion. In fact, training the SVJ misses the point of why it is used.Read more at location 1413

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many studies have shown that aerobic training actually interferes with maximum strength and power development and expression.Read more at location 1529

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People for whom aerobic training – doing “cardio” – addresses a problem that does not exist would be better served by devoting the time to skill acquisition, more complete recovery, or a hobby.Read more at location 1535

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In fact, a man who has gotten strong through an effectively designed program of barbell training will always respond more robustly and more quickly to a return to training than he did the first time as a novice, no matter how long a period of detraining he is subjected to.Read more at location 1621

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an athlete stops training for a period of a few months and restarts training again, he should start back one level (see chapters 6, 7, and 8) below where he was when he stopped.Read more at location 1645

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However, the fastest muscular hypertrophy any trainee will ever experience is during his initial novice progression where he uses sets of 5 reps to get strong as rapidly as possible – and therefore to get bigger as fast as possible.Read more at location 1693

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But in the final analysis, sets of 5 reps have proven over the decades to be the most useful number of reps per set for strength training.Read more at location 1729

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They are better for general training purposes than singles across because they allow more technique practice with more reps.Read more at location 1732

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successful athletes and lifters will use sets of 5 for their entire careers under the bar.Read more at location 1735

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If strength gains are the primary training objective, rests of greater than 2 minutes are not only okay, but quite necessary.Read more at location 1767

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It is wise for athletes in training to ignore exercise recommendations for the general public.Read more at location 1782

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strength and power are best acquired in ways that best develop strength and power, not in ways that look like the application of that strength and power on the field.Read more at location 1810

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Virtually every single effective exercise program for sports performance will include the following rather short list of weight room exercises: squat, press, deadlift, bench press, clean or power clean, jerk, snatch or power snatch, and chin-ups or pull-ups. And few, if any, other exercises are ever necessary for the effective strength and power development of an athlete at any level of training advancement.Read more at location 1820

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Novices do not benefit from training more frequently,Read more at location 1834

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However, effective strength training programming will never devolve into the rotation of exercises for the sake of variety and excitement. The variables in effective strength training are always load, volume, intensity, and rest; variety for its own sake is a hallmark of Exercise, not Training.Read more at location 1871

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partial squats should never form any component of an athlete’s training.Read more at location 1890

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Studies have found that longer duration repetitions with a longer time under tension actually demand less metabolic work when compared to fast-moving repetitions powered by higher numbers of motor units firing together.Read more at location 1996

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Begin with a simple 3-5 minutes on an exercise bike or, best of all, the C2 rower.Read more at location 2031

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The majority of the data available indicates that pre-training stretching neither reduces the frequency of injury nor effectively improves flexibility, the two areas in which it is supposed to provide benefit.Read more at location 2054

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If pre-training stretching doesn’t increase flexibility, what does? Proper warm-up does.Read more at location 2059

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Properly done, each weighted rep provides a better stretch than an unweighted traditional stretch, because the complete range of motion is easier to reach with the help of the weight.Read more at location 2065

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Manual manipulation of the tight fascial components of the muscle bellies immediately acts on the source of the problem, and one treatment can produce more improvement than months of stretching on your own.Read more at location 2076

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The log records trends in both training and schedule compliance that have a definite bearing on progress. It should include the athlete’s impressions of that day’s workout, useful cues discovered, and any other subjective information that might serve a purpose later. It might also include notes about sleep, diet, and other information pertinent to recovery.Read more at location 2088

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Chins provide enough arm work and additional lat work – satisfying the normal male concerns about appearance – that they can be considered the first and most important assistance exercise to include in the novice program.Read more at location 2214

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Focused abdominal exercises may be the least important assistance movements to include.Read more at location 2217

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The reason intensity is kept relatively high while the volume of training is dropped is to maintain neuromuscular efficiency, the ability of the neural system to fire the motor units in a way that allows all the muscles to work together to efficiently display strength in a movement pattern. Basic muscle strength remains relatively constant even with reduced training. Neuromuscular efficiency, however, is much more influenced by short-term changes in training. This is why we keep intensity relatively high and cut volume drastically: high intensity with low volume develops and maintains neuromuscular efficiency, while high volume with low intensity does not. (This is why kettlebell training and high-rep light-weight conditioning do not produce significant increases in strength.) Keeping the weight within 10% of where it was while drastically dropping volume maintains a high state of neuromuscular readiness, while at the same time allowing for some additional recovery. It allows the trainee to resume personal record performance after the back-off period.Read more at location 2625

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Progress will always be slower, absolute strength improvements will always be lower, and upper-body strength will always lag behind lower-body strength when compared to men of even the same bodyweight. Sorry. We can’t have a multiple orgasm.Read more at location 2811

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Strength work needs up to five sets of 1 to 5 reps on the core lifts, hypertrophy calls for five sets of 12 to 15 reps with little rest between sets, and power work requires five to ten sets of 1 to 5 reps at weights light enough to move fast but heavy enough to be hard to complete. Cleans and snatches will be done with five to ten sets of 1 to 3 reps. Assistance exercises will be done with higher reps, usually 10 to 15, and fewer sets, usually three to five.Read more at location 2934

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Any workout that takes longer than two hours probably involves too many exercises, too many sets, or too much talking.Read more at location 2950

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When a lift gets stuck, the lifter should ask himself a very important question: does this lift need more work, or less work? Almost always, the answer is one of those two things. It almost never involves adding more and different exercises. Generally a little bit of common sense and review of the training log will provide the answer. If the lift is being trained once per week for 3 sets, there is a good chance it needs more work. If the lift is being trained 3 times per week for 5 sets, it probably needs less work. Exercise variety is not the problem – the programming of the primary exercises being used is the problem.Read more at location 3063

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That is the paradox: the United States leads the world in scientific knowledge in many areas but trails in applying that knowledge to social and human realities.Read more at location 173

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In our materialist society, with our attachment to ego gratification, few of us escape the lure of addictive behaviors. Only our blindness and self-flattery stand in the way of seeing that the severely addicted are people who have suffered more than the rest of us but who share a profound commonality with the majority of “respectable” citizens.Read more at location 179

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Today many clinics across the country have lengthy waiting lists, and researchers estimate that some twenty million Americans who could benefit from treatment are not getting it.Read more at location 200

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At first all I hear is a litany of funerary clichés, and I am annoyed. Soon, however, I find myself comforted. In the face of untimely death, it occurs to me, there are no clichés.Read more at location 643

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What a wonderful world it would be if the simplistic view were accurate: that human beings need only negative consequences to teach them hard lessons. Then any number of fast-food franchises would be tickets to bankruptcy, the TV room would be a deserted spot in our homes,Read more at location 694

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Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of view, addicts are self-medicating conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, or even attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Read more at location 784

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The pain pathways in humans are no different. The very same brain centers that interpret and “feel” physical pain also become activated during the experience of emotional rejection: on brain scans they “light up” in response to social ostracism just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli.4 When people speak of feeling “hurt” or of having emotional “pain,” they are not being abstract or poetic but scientifically quite precise.Read more at location 791

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The research literature is unequivocal: most hard-core substance abusers come from abusive homes.Read more at location 800

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The addict’s reliance on the drug to reawaken her dulled feelings is no adolescent caprice. The dullness is itself a consequence of an emotional malfunction not of her making: the internal shutdown of vulnerability.Read more at location 869

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The drug restores to the addict the childhood vivacity she suppressed long ago.Read more at location 887

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“Have you ever talked with anyone about this?” In the Downtown Eastside this is almost always a rhetorical question.Read more at location 1173

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Unlike the opiates methadone and heroin, cocaine does not provoke dangerous physiological withdrawal reactions.Read more at location 1479

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I’m trying force on her a truth that, as a workaholic doctor and in other ways, too, I tend to ignore in my own life.Read more at location 1501

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“What works for me,” says Kim Markel, “is if I practice not looking for the big, shining success but appreciating the small:Read more at location 1806

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This behavior has been recurring for decades, since my children were— Wait. “The behavior has been recurring?” What a neat way to put it outside of myself, as if it lived as an independent entity. No, I have been doing this for decades, since my children were small.Read more at location 2152

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My addiction to music and books could masquerade as an aesthetic passion, and my addiction to work as a service to humanity—and I do have aesthetic passion, and I do wish to serve humanity.Read more at location 2160

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You’re more alive when you are passionate, and you triumph whether or not you attain your goal.Read more at location 2181

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Above all, I’m absent. It’s impossible to be fully present when you’re putting up walls to keep from being seen.Read more at location 2233

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I’m instantly filled with judgment. Annoyed by his neediness and weakness of will—that is, by my own—I want to teach him a lesson.Read more at location 2271

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I’m struck by that. Aha, surrender is not some abstract, airy-fairy, spiritual concept. It’s individual, and it’s practical.Read more at location 2338

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‘I’ve been sober for two years now,’ he said, ‘and six months ago, I got my first job. If I had known how good it felt to work, I would have been done with drinking long ago. Five months ago I got my own place. Had I known how good that was, I would have gone sober long ago. Three months ago I got myself a girlfriend. Boy, if I’d known how great that was, I might never have drank in the first place.’ ” Merriment, chortles, the clapping of appreciative hands.Read more at location 2362

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To get anywhere near a complete picture we must keep shaking the kaleidoscope to see what other patterns emerge.Read more at location 2480

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Although tolerance is a common effect of many addictions, a person does not need to have developed a tolerance to be addicted.Read more at location 2490

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Although a feature of drug addiction, a person’s physical dependence on a substance does not necessarily imply that he is addicted to it.Read more at location 2493

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Withdrawal does not mean you were addicted; for addiction, there also needs to be craving and relapse.Read more at location 2499

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In the cloudy swirl of misleading ideas surrounding public discussion of addiction, there’s one that stands out: the misconception that drug taking by itself will lead to addiction—in other words, that the cause of addiction resides in the power of the drug over the human brain. It is one of the bedrock fables sustaining the so-called War on Drugs. It also obscures the existence of a basic addiction process of which drugs are only one possible object, among many. Compulsive gambling, for example, is widely considered to be a form of addiction without anyone arguing that it’s caused by a deck of cards.Read more at location 2514

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Mere exposure to a stimulant or narcotic or to any other mood-altering chemical does not make a person susceptible. If she becomes an addict, it’s because she’s already at risk.Read more at location 2548

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According to a U.S. national survey, the highest rate of dependence after any use is for tobacco: 32 percent of people who used nicotine even once went on to long-term habitual use. For alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine the rate is about 15 percent, and for heroin the rate is 23 percent.Read more at location 2563

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being dominant leads to brain changes that give stronger monkeys some protection from an addictive response to cocaine.Read more at location 2597

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As we will see, emotional isolation, powerlessness, and stress are exactly the conditions that promote the neurobiology of addiction in human beings as well.Read more at location 2603

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Drugs, in short, do not make anyone into an addict, any more than food makes a person into a compulsive eater. There has to be a preexisting vulnerability.Read more at location 2634

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In the brains of cocaine addicts the age-related expansion of white matter is absent.Read more at location 2678

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In the part of the cerebral cortex responsible for regulating emotional impulses and for making rational decisions, addicted brains have reduced activity.Read more at location 2684

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This recent primate study showed for the first time that the monkeys who developed a higher rate of cocaine self-administration—the ones who became more hard-core users—had a lower number of these receptors to begin with, before ever having been exposed to the chemical. This illuminating finding suggests that among rhesus monkeys, who are considered to be excellent models of human addiction, some are much more prone to extremes of drug dependence than are others.Read more at location 2705

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The very concept of choice appears less clear-cut if we understand that the addict’s ability to choose, if not absent, is certainly impaired.Read more at location 2768

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without opioid receptors they can’t maintain the relationship with their mother, on whom their survival depends.Read more at location 2837

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Even the administration of inert medications—substances that do not have direct physical activity—will light up opioid receptors, leading to decreased pain perception.7 This is the so-called placebo effect, which, far from being imaginary, is a genuine physiological event.Read more at location 2849

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A child who complains bitterly of the slightest hurt and is often accused of being a “crybaby” is probably low on endorphins and is likely to be less adventurous than his peers.Read more at location 2901

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The less effective our own internal chemical happiness system is, the more driven we are to seek joy or relief through drug-taking or through other compulsions we perceive as rewarding.Read more at location 2939

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The VTA and NA and their connections with other brain circuits are also active when we explore novel objects and situations and evaluate them in light of previous reinforcing experiences. In other words, nerve fibers in the VTA are triggering dopamine release in the NA when a person needs to know, “Is this new whatever-it-is going to help me or hurt me? Will I like it or not?” The role of the dopamine system in novelty-seeking helps explain why some people are driven to risky behaviors such as street racing. It’s one way to experience the excitement of dopamine release.Read more at location 3012

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The prefrontal cortex (PFC), writes psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, “plays a central role in the seemingly free selection of behaviors” by inhibiting many of the alternative responses that arise in a situation and allowing only one to proceed. “It makes sense, then, that when this region is damaged patients become unable to stifle inappropriate responses to their environment.”3 In other words, people with impaired PFC function will have poor impulse control and will behave in ways that to others seem uncalled for, childish, or bizarre.Read more at location 3126

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Babies are highly sensitive to such cues—as are aphasiac adults (people who, usually due to a stroke, have lost the ability to understand spoken language). Because they pay heed to physical and emotional rather than verbal messages, young children and aphasiacs have a much better sense of when they are being lied to than most of us have.Read more at location 3164

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A regular finding of brain-imaging studies on drug addicts is under-activity of the OFC after detoxification.9 In a similar vein, psychological testing of cocaine addicts has shown impaired decision making. In one study, some key aspects of their decision-making ability was a mere 50 percent of normal. Only people with physical injury to the frontal cortex would score lower.Read more at location 3183

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According to PET scans, the OFC distinguishes and reacts to angry, disgusted and fearful facial expressions in other people but not to neutral facial expressions.14 Literally, all the “offending” person had to do was to look at Claire the wrong way.Read more at location 3221

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That a TV producer, or any layperson for that matter, would have trouble accepting the new brain science is understandable, given the mind-body separation prevalent in our culture, and given, too, how long we’ve been taught that genes determine almost everything about a human being: personality traits, behavior, eating patterns, and all manner of disease.Read more at location 3285

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Why are we saddled with such a disadvantage in comparison to a horse?Read more at location 3321

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We know that the majority of chronically hard-core substance-dependent adults lived, as infants and children, under conditions of severe adversity that left an indelible stamp on their development. Their predisposition to addiction was programmed in their early years. Their brains never had a chance.Read more at location 3424

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Predictably, in adulthood these maternally deprived animals exhibit a greater propensity to self-administer cocaine.4 And it doesn’t take extreme deprivation: in another study, rat pups deprived of their mother’s presence for only one hour a day during their first week of life grew up to be much more eager than their peers to take cocaine on their own.Read more at location 3455

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People who have difficulty forming intimate relationships are at risk for addiction; they may turn to drugs as social lubricants.Read more at location 3486

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For each emotionally traumatic childhood circumstance, there is a two- to threefold increase in the likelihood of early alcohol abuse.Read more at location 3527

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The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress for human beings: uncertainty, lack of information, and loss of control.Read more at location 3629

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Whatever problem we are hoping to resolve or prevent—be it war, terrorism, economic inequality, a marriage in trouble, climate change, or addiction—the way we see its origins will largely determine our course of action.Read more at location 3691

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The study’s results are consistent with previous evidence that stress on the mother during pregnancy affects the brain of the infant, with long-term and perhaps permanent effects.21 This is where the father comes in, because the quality of the relationship with her partner is often a woman’s best protection from stress or, on the other hand, the greatest source of it.Read more at location 3763

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In the final analysis, it’s not the activity or object itself that defines an addiction but our relationship to whatever is the external focus of our attention or behavior.Read more at location 3835

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addictions are not a collection of distinct disorders but the manifestations of an underlying process that can be expressed in many ways.Read more at location 3844

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Emotional processes rule the addict’s perspective: whatever she is feeling at the moment tends to define her view of the world and will control her actions.Read more at location 4078

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When relationships fail to sustain such people, they may turn to addiction as the emotional crutch. Some of my Portland patients functioned reasonably well until, say, their marriages fell apart; then they spiraled rapidly into substance use.Read more at location 4088

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These, then, are the traits that most often underlie the addiction process: poor self-regulation, lack of basic differentiation, lack of a healthy sense of self, a sense of deficient emptiness, and impaired impulse control.Read more at location 4096

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As for forays to Sikora’s, music-seeking offers excitement and tension that I can immediately resolve and a reward I can immediately attain—unlike other tensions in my life and other desired rewards.Read more at location 4144

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Except in rare cases of physical disease, the more obese a person is, the more emotionally starved they have been at some crucial period in their life.Read more at location 4169

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Her belief, shared by many in our culture, was that if strong negative emotions like her anger remain under cover, the children will not suffer its effects.Read more at location 4336

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As a rule, whatever we don’t deal with in our lives, we pass on to our children. Our unfinished emotional business becomes theirs.Read more at location 4339

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our sneers always tell us who we feel we are.Read more at location 4410

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in people who were abused and neglected as young children.Read more at location 4628

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Within living memory Native children in Canada were seized from their homes, alienated from their families, and, for all intents and purposes, incarcerated in “civilizing” institutions where their lot was one of cultural suppression, emotional and physical maltreatment, and, with distressing frequency, sexual abuse.Read more at location 4694

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The predictable and widespread consequences of what my friend, psychologist Gordon Neufeld, has termed peer orientation are the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence, and precocious sexualization of North American youth.Read more at location 4716

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It is commonly thought that peer affiliation leads to drug use because kids set bad examples for each other. That’s part of the picture, but a deeper reason is that under ordinary circumstances, adolescents who rely on their peers for emotional acceptance are more prone to being hurt, to experiencing the sting of each other’s immature and therefore often insensitive ways of relating. They are far more stressed than are children who are well connected to nurturing adults.Read more at location 4726

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The drug addict is today’s scapegoat. Viewed honestly, much of our culture is geared toward enticing us away from ourselves, into externally directed activity, into diverting the mind from ennui and distress. The hard-core addict surrenders her pretense about that. Her life is all about escape. The rest of us can, with varying success, maintain our charade, but to do so, we banish her to the margins of society.Read more at location 4747

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Cops are not necessarily predisposed to harshness, but a loss of humane interaction inevitably results whenever an entire group of people is delegitimized while another group is granted virtually unrestrained physical authority over them.Read more at location 4780

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The U.S. government aggressively promotes its view of drug addiction internationally and brings enormous pressure on other countries to fall in line with its own opinions. Even in other countries that have resisted adopting U.S. practices wholesale, American influence has been exerted against the institution of less restrictive measures. As we’ll see in Chapter Twenty-eight, U.S. interference makes it very difficult for other countries, including Canada, to establish enlightened drug policies.Read more at location 4881

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The United States continues to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on practices that demonstrably fail while eschewing approaches with the potential to help. Studies by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that 80 percent of felony inmates and juvenile arrestees are in one or more ways influenced by drug or alcohol addiction. Joseph Califano Jr., chairman and president of the center, has written that “if all inmates and arrestees who need treatment received it, and the success rate were only 10 percent, the cost of treatment would be recouped in a year, and thereafter the economic benefits in productivity, taxes, and reduction in criminal activity would approach $10 billion per year.” To these benefits may be added the reduction in crime, given the expert consensus that the average addict commits between 89 to 191 crimes each year.Read more at location 4900

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The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.Read more at location 4911

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The illegality of mind-altering substances enriches drug cartels, crime syndicates, and their corrupt enablers among politicians, government officials, judges, lawyers, and police officers around the world. If one set out deliberately to fashion a legal system designed to maximize and sustain the wealth of international drug criminals and their abettors, one could never dream up anything to improve upon the present one—except, perhaps, to add tobacco to the list of contraband substances.Read more at location 4947

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There are thousands of destitute hard-core drug addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside alone. Knowing that many of them have to steal, shoplift, scam, and panhandle hundreds of dollars a day to sustain their habits, we can begin to compute the economic hit our society is taking in service of the arbitrary principle that people may poison themselves with alcohol or kill themselves with cigarette-derived toxins, but those whose drug of choice is a narcotic or a stimulant are to be considered criminals.Read more at location 5040

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More fundamentally, the war is doomed because neither the methods of war nor the war metaphor itself is appropriate to a complex social problem that calls for compassion, self-searching insight, and factually researched scientific understanding.Read more at location 5069

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We may also consider that this war provided a cause to marshal people around at a time in the 1980s when the Soviet ogre had left the stage and the Muslim terrorist had yet to become the leading villain. In a society that habitually seems to find an enemy to loathe and fear, the addict serves as an ever-present candidate for the role. Given also the heavily disproportionate representation of minority peoples in prisons in almost all Western societies and most particularly in the United States, a punitive legal stance on drugs may also be seen as a form of imposing heavy-handed social control over disenfranchised and disaffected populations.Read more at location 5074

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The scarcity of scientific thought informing public debates on addiction is mirrored in the academic and medical arenas. In this era of sub-subspecialization, each discipline appears to work in isolation from knowledge gathered by other researchers in closely related fields. We need far more integration of knowledge both in the professional realm and among laypeople.Read more at location 5307

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Addicts, all but the very few completely sociopathic ones, are deeply self-critical and harsh with themselves. They are keenly sensitive to judgmental tones in others and respond with withdrawal or defensive denial.Read more at location 5341

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Thus, for all the valid reasons we have for wanting the addict to “just say no,” we first need to offer her something to which she can say “yes.”Read more at location 5475

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If our guiding principle is that a person who makes his own bed ought to lie in it, we should immediately dismantle much of our health care system. Many diseases and conditions arise from self-chosen habits or circumstances and could be prevented by more astute decisions. According to a recent study by British Columbia’s health officer, the provincial government spends $1.8 billion dollars on diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyles.1 The average per capita health care cost for those with no risk factors is “$1,003 compared with $2,086 per capita for those with three risk factors, including smoking, being overweight/obese and physically inactive.”2 All of these factors, we might say, represent “choices,” and even after a heart attack, for instance, some patients will continue to bring these risks upon themselves. The same is true of people with chronic bronchitis who persist in smoking, skiers who brave moguls and steep slopes despite having sustained fractures, and people who remain in a stressful marriage despite requiring treatment for depression or anxiety. No cardiologist, respiratory specialist, orthopedic surgeon, or psychiatrist would refuse treatment on the ground that the problem was self-inflicted.Read more at location 5626

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It would have been instructive to know whether or not the psychiatrist and his faithful scribe at the Globe were willing to extend this principle to other groups, such as, say, smokers with lung cancer or emphysema, type A business executives who work themselves into a heart attack, battered women who remain loyal to an abusive partner, or people injured in automobile accidents in full knowledge of the risks of driving. According to this same logic, no smoker should be defibrillated and brought back to life after a heart attack, and no one who drinks alcohol should receive a blood transfusion in the wake of intestinal bleeding. Anyone worried about the possibility of a myocardial infarction or a stroke ought to wear a large badge identifying him as a nonsmoker, nondrinker, regular exerciser, and nonconsumer of trans-fatty acids. Absent such a marker, no bystander should even dial 911 on their behalf.Read more at location 5652

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“People often talk about American’s Puritan origins as the reason for opposition to needle exchange,” says Daniel Wolfe, the deputy director of the New York—based International Harm Reduction Development program at the Open Society Institute, “but it’s actually evangelism that underlies most of the politics against needle exchange. To give someone a needle or methadone is seen as giving up on the idea that they can be ‘saved,’ and as a moral failure for both drug user and care provider. The moral reality of leaving drug users to die of HIV because you refuse to adjust this vision of redemption to reality, or the moral implications of turning our anti-harm-reduction ideology into a global crusade go unexamined.… The ban on federal funds for needle exchange in the United States—the only such restriction in the world—finds further reinforcement in the American hostility to central government assistance to people in need.”Read more at location 5709

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The problem’s not that the truth is harsh but that liberation from ignorance is as painful as being born. Run after truth until you’re breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments. NAGUIB MAHFOUZ Palace of DesireRead more at location 5844

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We teach what we most need to learn—and sometimes give what we most need to receive.Read more at location 5864

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By its very nature, chronic anxiety has nothing to do with “reasons.” First it springs into being and much later, once we develop the ability to think, it recruits thoughts and explanations to serve it. In contrast to healthy anxiety (for which a better word is fear) felt in the face of danger—like the fear a gazelle might experience in the presence of a hungry lion or that a small child might feel when his parents are not in sight, chronic anxiety is not rooted in the experience of the moment. It precedes thought. We may believe we’re anxious about this or that—body image, the state of the world, relationship issues, the weather—but no matter what story we weave around it, the anxiety just is. Like addiction itself, anxiety will always find a target but exists independently of its targets.Read more at location 5956

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“Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the person or situation that triggers them,”Read more at location 6172

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Many addicts define themselves through their addictions and feel quite unmoored and lost without them. Substance-dependent people do this, but so do workaholics and other behavior addicts. They fear giving up their addiction not only because of the temporary relief it offers but also because they just cannot conceive who they might be without it.Read more at location 6192

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Mindfulness can be practiced throughout the day, not only on the meditation cushion. There are many techniques for this, but they all come down to paying close attention to one’s experience of each moment, without seeking distraction. When I go for walks now, I no longer have earphones piping music into my head. I try to stay present to the physical, aural, and visual sensations I experience, as well as noticing my mental processes and reactions. Sometimes I can keep this up for as long as thirty seconds at a time before my mind scurries off into la-la land. I call that progress.Read more at location 6257

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I have a tendency, typical in attention deficit disorder (ADD), of beginning projects with enthusiasm and a sense of commitment, only to abandon them after some lapse or failure.Read more at location 6306

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Mindfully honoring our creativity helps us transcend the feeling of deficient emptiness that drives addiction.Read more at location 6418

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Contrary to a popular misconception, confrontational “tough love” interventions are likely to fail. A1999 study compared confrontation with a method employing a nurturing attitude by the family. “More than twice as many families succeeded in getting their loved ones into treatment (64 percent) with the gentler approach than with standard intervention (30 percent). But no reality shows push the less dramatic method, and it is difficult to find clinicians who use it,”Read more at location 6702

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Sometimes a person remains with an addicted partner for fear of the guilt they might experience otherwise. A therapist once said to me, “When it comes to a choice between feeling guilt or resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If refusal to take on responsibility for another person’s behaviors burdens you with guilt, while consenting to it leaves you eaten by resentment, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide.Read more at location 6712

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Any person who wishes to make a difference in the life of the addict should first conduct a compassionate self-inquiry. They need to examine their own anxieties, agendas, and motives. “Purity and impurity belong to oneself,” the Buddha taught. “No one else can purify another.” Before any intervention in the life of another, we need to ask ourselves: How am I doing in my own life? I may not have the addiction I’m trying to exorcise in my friend or son or coworker, but how am I faring with my own compulsions? As I try to liberate this other, how free am I—do I, for example, have an insistent need to change him for the better? I want to awaken this person to their genuine possibilities, but am I on the path to fulfilling my own? These questions will help to keep us from projecting our unconscious anxieties and concerns onto the other—a burden the addict will instinctively reject. Nobody wants to perceive himself as someone’s salvage project.Read more at location 6742

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All problems are psychological, but all solutions are spiritual.Read more at location 6867

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In a state of spiritual poverty, we will be seduced by whatever it is that can make us insensate to our dread.Read more at location 6918

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The sparser the innate joy that springs from being alive, the more fervently we seek joy’s pale substitute, pleasure; the less our inner strength, the greater our craving for power; the feebler our awareness of truth, the more desperate our search for certainty outside of ourselves. The greater the dread, the more vigorous the gravitational pull of the addiction process.Read more at location 6922

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Anything can serve as the object of the addiction process, including religions that promise salvation and freedom. The physical entity called Jerusalem has itself become a fetish for many people of several faiths, with bloodshed and hatred being the consequence. It is no accident that in all major religions the most rigidly fundamentalist elements take the harshest, most punitive line against addicted people. Could it be that they see their own weakness and fear—and false attachments—reflected in the dark mirror addiction holds up to them?Read more at location 6925

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Our designated “addicts” march at the head of a long procession from which few of us ever step away.Read more at location 6931

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Our material culture tries to explain even unselfishness as arising from selfish motives. It is often asserted, cynically, that people who act in kindly ways, without any benefit to themselves, are doing so only to feel good. Neuroscience does not support that view: the brain area that lights up as a person performs an altruistic act is not the circuitry activated by pleasure or by the anticipation of reward. According to a recent study, a key contributor to humane behavior is the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), a region at the back of the brain whose function includes awareness of other people’s emotional states.4 It seems that we are wired to be in tune with one another’s needs, which is one of the roots of empathy. “Perhaps altruism did not grow out of a warm-glow feeling of doing good for others, but out of the simple recognition that that thing over there is a person that has intentions and goals. And therefore, I might want to treat them like I might want them to treat myself,” said one of the researchers—Scott Huettel, associate professor of psychology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. The golden rule may be inscribed in our brain circuits, not as a commandment but as an essential part of who we are.Read more at location 6936

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“The drug scene,” wrote Frankl, “is one aspect of a more general mass phenomenon, namely the feeling of meaninglessness resulting from the frustration of our existential needs which in turn has become a universal phenomenon in our industrial societies.”5 For “drug scene” we can also read: “the gambling scene … the eating scene … the overwork scene” and many other addictive pursuits.Read more at location 6952

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either parent being alcoholic increases the chance of the mother being battered by a factor of thirteen.Read more at location 7249

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No wonder that adopted children are generally more vulnerable to various developmental disorders—for example, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder—that increase the risk for addiction. No wonder that many adults who were adopted as infants harbor a powerful and lifelong sense of rejection or that among adoptees the adolescent suicide risk is double that of nonadopted children.Read more at location 7302

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In this Yale study as many as 35 percent of cocaine users who presented for treatment met the diagnostic criteria for childhood ADHD.1 In another study, as many as 40 percent of adult alcoholics were found to have underlying ADHD.2 People with ADHD are twice as likely as others to fall into substance abuse and nearly four times as likely as others to move from alcohol to other psychoactive drugs.3 People with ADHD are also more likely to smoke, to gamble, and to have any number of other addictive behaviors. Among crystal meth addicts a significant minority, 30 percent or more, also have lifelong ADHD.Read more at location 7335

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my book Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. (This was published in the United States as Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do about It. Although the content is exactly the same, I regard the U.S. title as an unfortunate simplification, an example of pop-style can-do self-helpism.)Read more at location 7349

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Intellectual knowledge, while important, is a poor competitor for deep-seated emotional and psychological drives.Read more at location 7416

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We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. The idea here is not self-condemnation but the preparation of a clean slate for a life of sobriety. We search our conscience to identify where and how we have betrayed ourselves or others, not to wallow in guilt but to leave ourselves unburdened in the present and to help clear our path to the future.Read more at location 7448

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A patient’s report that a stimulant drug like cocaine or crystal meth has a calming effect is virtual confirmation that he or she has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Read more at location 7516

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Aboriginal women between the ages of 25 and 44 are five times more likely than all other women of the same age to die as a result of violence, reported a Canadian federal study in 1996, “making them the prime targets and the most vulnerable in our society” (quoted in Stevie Cameron, The Pickton File [Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007], 163). In the United States, according to Department of Justice figures, “more than one in three American Indian and Alaska Native women would be raped in their lifetime, almost double the national average of 18 percent.” In the vast majority of cases, the perpetrators are non-Native (“For Indian Victims of Sexual Assault, a Tangled Legal Path,” New York Times, April 25, 2007, A15).Read more at location 7962

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Although it is the user’s job to focus on her tasks, the designer’s job is to look beyond the task to identify who the most important users are, and then to determine what their goals might be and why.Read more at location 826

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Computer literacy, however, is really a euphemism for forcing human beings to stretch their thinking to understand the inner workings of application logic, rather than having software-enabled products stretch to meet people’s usual ways of thinking.Read more at location 832

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This ability to represent the computer’s functioning independent of its true actions is far more pronounced in software than in any other medium. It allows a clever designer to hide some of the more unsavory facts of how the software really gets the job done. This disconnection between what is implemented and what is offered as explanation gives rise to a third model in the digital world, the designer’s represented model—how the designer chooses to represent an application’s functioning to the user. Donald Norman calls this the designer’s model.Read more at location 871

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One of the ways to address this problem is for designers to learn to be researchers.Read more at location 953

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It is a common perspective in business and engineering that numbers represent truth. But numbers—especially statistics describing human activities—are subject to interpretation and can be manipulated just as easily as textual data.Read more at location 1134

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It is most effective to interview each stakeholder in isolation, rather than in a larger, cross-departmental group. A one-on-one setting promotes candor on the part of the stakeholder and ensures that individual views are not lost in a crowd. (One of the most interesting things you can discover in such interviews is the extent to which everyone in a product team shares—or doesn’t share—a common vision.)Read more at location 1276

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As a designer, your job is to develop a vision that the entire team believes in. If you don’t take the time to understand everyone’s perspective, it’s unlikely that they will feel that proposed solutions reflect their priorities. Because these people have the responsibility and authority to deliver the product to the real world, they are guaranteed to have important knowledge and opinions. If you don’t ask for it upfront, it is likely to be forced on you later, often in the form of a critique of your proposed solutions.Read more at location 1300

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As you will later discover in user interviews, some people may express problems by trying to propose solutions. It’s the designer’s job to read between the lines of these suggestions, root out the real problems, and propose solutions appropriate to both the business and the users.Read more at location 1305

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designers should be careful to recognize that SMEs represent a somewhat skewed perspective because often, by necessity, they are invested in their understanding of the product/domain as it currently exists. This in-depth knowledge of product quirks and domain limitations can be at once a boon and a hindrance to innovative design.Read more at location 1314

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Context—Rather than interviewing the user in a clean white room, it is important to interact with and observe the user in her normal work environment, or whatever physical context is appropriate for the product. Observing users as they perform activities and questioning them in their own environments, filled with the artifacts they use each day, can bring to light the all-important details of their behaviors.Read more at location 1393

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Following the first principle of contextual inquiry, it is of critical importance that subjects be interviewed in the places where they actually use the products.Read more at location 1547

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If you approach ethnographic interviews with a fixed questionnaire, you not only run the risk of alienating the interview subject, but you also can cause the interviewers to miss out on a wealth of valuable user data. The entire premise of ethnographic interviews (and contextual inquiry) is that we as interviewers don’t know enough about the domain to presuppose the questions that need asking. We must learn what is important from the people we talk to.Read more at location 1556

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Far more useful than asking users for design advice is encouraging them to tell specific stories about their experiences with a product (whether an old version of the one you’re redesigning, or an analogous product or process).Read more at location 1616

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How people do things today is often a product of the obsolete systems and organizations they are forced to interact with. How people do things often bears little resemblance to how they would like to do things or how they can be most effective.Read more at location 1715

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With a common language comes a common understanding. Personas reduce the need for elaborate diagrammatic models; it’s easier to understand the many nuances of user behavior through the narrative structures that personas employ. Put simply, because personas resemble real people, they’re easier to relate to than feature lists and flowcharts.Read more at location 1786

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Understanding why a user performs certain tasks gives designers great power to improve or even eliminate tasks yet still accomplish the same goals. We can’t overemphasize how important goals are for personas. In fact, we would go so far as to say that if your user model doesn’t have any goals, what you have is not a persona.Read more at location 1900

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Few products become iconic in people’s lives in the way that, say, the Sony Walkman or the iPhone has. Clearly some products stand little chance of ever becoming symbolic in people’s lives—like Ethernet routers, for instance—no matter how wonderful they look or how well they behave. However, when the design of a product or service addresses users’ goals and motivations—possibly going beyond the product’s primary purpose, yet somehow connected to it via personal or cultural associations—the opportunity to create reflective meaning is greatly enhanced.Read more at location 2050

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The user’s most important goal is always to retain her human dignity and not feel stupid.Read more at location 2161

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Don’t make the user feel stupid. This is probably the most important interaction design guideline. This book examines numerous ways in which existing software makes the user feel stupid, and we explore ways to avoid that trap.Read more at location 2165

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From this point on, you should refer to the persona by his or her name.Read more at location 2257

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Focus the design for each interface on a single primary persona.Read more at location 2316

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Carroll’s concept of the actor as an abstracted, role-oriented model is insufficiently concrete to provide understanding of or empathy with users.Read more at location 2658

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Don’t spend too much time on the brainstorming step. A few hours for simple projects to a couple of days for a project of significant scope or complexity should be more than sufficient for you and your teammates to get all those crazy ideas out of your systems. If you find your ideas getting repetitious, or the popcorn stops popping, that’s a good time to stop.Read more at location 2815

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In the early stages of design, pretend the interface is magic.Read more at location 2904

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We’ve found that sketch-like storyboards of context and screens, accompanied by narrative in the form of scenarios, are a highly effective way to explore and discuss design solutions without creating undue overhead and inertia. Research about the usability of architectural renderings supports this notion. A study of people’s reactions to different types of CAD images found that pencil-like sketches encouraged discourse about a proposed design and also increased understanding of the renderings as representing work in progress.Read more at location 2988

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In a nutshell, interactions with a digital system should be similar in tone and helpfulness to interactions with a polite, considerate human.Read more at location 3065

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For example, a mobile phone that behaves like a considerate person knows that, after you’ve completed a call with a number that isn’t in your contacts, you may want to save the number. Therefore, the phone provides an easy and obvious way to do so. An inconsiderate phone forces you to scribble the number on the back of your hand as you go into your contacts to create a new entry.Read more at location 3070

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Necessary-use interactions demand pedagogy because they are seldom encountered: Users may forget how to access the function or how to perform tasks related to it. However, this rare use means that users won’t require parallel interaction idioms such as keyboard equivalents—nor do such functions need to be user-customizable. An example of a necessary-use scenario for the design of a smartphone is if the phone was sold secondhand, requiring the removal of all personal information associated with the original owner.Read more at location 3187

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Although the code may succeed or fail on its capability to successfully handle edge cases, the product will succeed or fail on its capability to successfully handle daily use and necessary cases.Read more at location 3195

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Using experience attributes to develop these approaches helps move stakeholders away from personal tastes and biases by providing a vocabulary for an experience that is in sync with the brand’s meaning.Read more at location 3255

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Because the cost of a hinge can make or break the margin on hardware, and because internal components (such as a battery) can have a tremendous impact on form, an early sanity check with mechanical and electrical engineers is critical.Read more at location 3291

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Unfortunately, it’s difficult to craft a test that assesses anything beyond first-time ease of learning. There are a number of techniques for evaluating a product’s usability for intermediate or expert users, but this can be quite time-consuming and is imprecise at best.Read more at location 3377

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User research must occur before ideation; user feedback and usability testing must follow it. In fact, when project constraints force us to choose between ethnographic research and usability testing, we find that time spent on research gives us much more leverage to create a compelling product. Likewise, given limited days and dollars, we’ve found that spending time on design provides more value to the product design process than testing. It’s much more important to spend time making considered design decisions based on a solid research foundation than to test a half-baked design created without the benefit of clear, compelling models of the target users and their goals and needs.Read more at location 3394

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If things don’t work at first in the meeting, walk up to the board and draw a bad idea. If your partner is a good Generator, he or she will leap up and begin building on the bad idea or offer a counterproposal.Read more at location 3591

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Before you begin, make sure you’re designing for a higher-level “story” or scenario. This will help give your partner a rubric from which to work during the meeting. Appeal to your partner’s evaluative capabilities: “Can you help me figure out whether this idea is any good?”Read more at location 3594

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True greatness will be achieved through the abundant mind that works selflessly—with mutual respect, for mutual benefit.Read more at location 595

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Few needs of the human heart are greater than the need to be understood—to have a voice that is heard, respected, and valued—to have influence.Read more at location 596

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MIND: Culture: watch television, “entertain me.” Principle: read broadly and deeply, continuous education.Read more at location 615

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Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.Read more at location 638

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we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.Read more at location 692

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To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.Read more at location 768

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Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.Read more at location 1025

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borrowing strength builds weakness.Read more at location 1066

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When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection.Read more at location 1075

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.Read more at location 1162

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I would suggest that you shift your paradigm of your own involvement in this material from the role of learner to that of teacher. Take an inside-out approach, and read with the purpose in mind ofRead more at location 1394

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sharing or discussing what you learn with someone else within 48 hours after you learn it.Read more at location 1395

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These visions are disjointed and out of proportion. They are often more projections than reflections, projecting the concerns and character weaknesses of people giving the input rather than accurately reflecting what we are.Read more at location 1460

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Proactive people subordinate feelings to values.Read more at location 1685

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They work on the things they can do something about.Read more at location 1696

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By working on ourselves instead of worrying about conditions, we were able to influence the conditions.Read more at location 1708

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Please find a place to read these next few pages where you can be alone and uninterrupted. Clear your mind of everything except what you will read and what I will invite you to do. Don’t worry about your schedule, your business, your family, or your friends. Just focus with me and really open your mind.Read more at location 1885

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Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate?Read more at location 1897

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It is possible to be busy—very busy—without being very effective.Read more at location 1922

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“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”Read more at location 1976

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As individuals, groups, and businesses, we’re often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don’t even realize we’re in the wrong jungle.Read more at location 1984

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He learned to withdraw from his own mind and look at it to see if the scripts were appropriate and wise.Read more at location 2032

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When his wife suggested that perhaps he should have gone to work, he responded, “The work will come again, but childhood won’t.” For the rest of their lives his children remembered this little act of priority setting, not only as an object lesson in their minds but as an expression of love in their hearts.Read more at location 2204

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It is often much easier to recognize the center in someone else’s life than to see it in your own.Read more at location 2295

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Admittedly, we’re not omniscient. Our knowledge and understanding of correct principles is limited by our own lack of awareness of our true nature and the world around us and by the flood of trendy philosophies and theories that are not in harmony with correct principles.Read more at location 2323

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The principles don’t change; our understanding of them does.Read more at location 2328

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Returning to the computer metaphor, Habit 1 says, “You are the programmer.” Habit 2, then, says, “Write the program.” Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, that you are the programmer, you won’t really invest in writing the program.Read more at location 2407

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I recently finished reviewing my own mission statement, which I do fairly regularly. Sitting on the edge of a beach, alone, at the end of a bicycle ride, I took out my organizer and hammered it out. It took several hours, but I felt a sense of clarity, a sense of organization and commitment, a sense of exhilaration and freedom.Read more at location 2416

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I find the process is as important as the product. Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs.Read more at location 2418

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There are a number of ways to do this. Through the powers of your imagination, you can visualize your own funeral, as we did at the beginning of this chapter. Write your own eulogy. Actually write it out. Be specific.Read more at location 2454

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“Assume you only have this one semester to live,” I tell my students, “and that during this semester you are to stay in school as a good student. Visualize how you would spend your semester.”Read more at location 2461

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The futility of bad-mouthing, bad thinking, put-downs, and accusation becomes very evident when they think in terms of having only a short time to live. Principles and values become more evident to everybody.Read more at location 2467

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A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it’s personal, it’s positive, it’s present tense, it’s visual, and it’s emotional.Read more at location 2479

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One of the main things his research showed was that almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind.Read more at location 2503

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You can do it in every area of your life. Before a performance, a sales presentation, a difficult confrontation, or the daily challenge of meeting a goal, see it clearly, vividly, relentlessly, over and over again. Create an internal “comfort zone.” Then, when you get into the situation, it isn’t foreign. It doesn’t scare you.Read more at location 2505

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We are just beginning to realize that we have overdeveloped the material aspects of existence at the expense of the deeper emotional and spiritual aspects, and we are paying the price for that error.Read more at location 175

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In our society, we are great believers in education. We believe that knowledge makes a person civilized. Civilization, however, polishes a person only superficially. Subject our noble and sophisticated gentle-person to the stresses of war or economic collapse, and see what happens.Read more at location 193

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Vipassana, by definition, is the cultivation of mindfulness or awareness.Read more at location 265

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Learning to look at each second as if it were the first and only second in the universe is essential in vipassana meditation.Read more at location 276

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vipassana bhavana means the cultivation of the mind toward the aim of seeing in the special way that leads to insight and full understanding.Read more at location 452

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In vipassana meditation we train ourselves to ignore the constant impulses to be more comfortable, and we dive into reality instead.Read more at location 460

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Essentially, insight meditation is a practice of investigative personal discovery.Read more at location 472

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You can learn to perceive your life as an ever-flowing movement.Read more at location 484

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Vipassana meditation teaches us how to scrutinize our own perceptual process with great precision. We learn to watch the arising of thought and perception with a feeling of serene detachment. We learn to view our own reactions to stimuli with calmness and clarity. We begin to see ourselves reacting without getting caught up in the reactions themselves.Read more at location 506

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Every evil deed, every example of heartlessness in the world, stems directly from this false sense of “me” as distinct from everything else.Read more at location 520

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The more hours you spend in meditation, the greater your ability to calmly observe every impulse and intention, thought and emotion, just as it arises in the mind. Your progress to liberation is measured in hours on the cushion.Read more at location 533

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see all the phenomena in the mind as being perfectly natural and understandable. Try to exercise a disinterested acceptance at all times with respect to everything you experience.Read more at location 568

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Subject all statements to the actual test of your own experience, and let the results be your guide to truth. Insight meditation evolves out of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight into the true structure of existence.Read more at location 574

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Differences do exist between people, but dwelling upon them is a dangerous process. Unless carefully handled, this leads directly to egotism.Read more at location 584

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Rather than noticing the differences between oneself and others, the meditator trains him- or herself to notice the similarities. She centers her attention on those factors that are universal to all life, things that will move her closer to others. Then her comparisons, if any, lead to feelings of kinship rather than of estrangement.Read more at location 591

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If we are mindful, we will diligently use our wisdom to look into our own mind. If we do not have hatred in us, we will not be concerned when someone points out our shortcomings. Rather, we will be thankful to the person who draws our attention to our faults. We have to be extremely wise and mindful to thank the person who exposes our faults for helping us to tread the upward path of self-improvement. We all have blind spots. The other person is our mirror in which we see our faults with wisdom. We should consider the person who shows our shortcomings as one who excavates a hidden treasure of which we were unaware, since it is by knowing the existence of our deficiencies that we can improve ourselves. Improving ourselves is the unswerving path to the perfection that is our goal in life. Before we try to surmount our defects, we should know what they are. Then, and only then, by overcoming these weaknesses, can we cultivate noble qualities hidden deep down in our subconscious mind.Read more at location 661

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After sitting motionlessly, close your eyes. Our mind is analogous to a cup of muddy water. The longer you keep a cup of muddy water still, the more the mud settles down and the water will be seen clearly. Similarly, if you keep quiet without moving your body, focusing your entire undivided attention on the subject of your meditation, your mind settles down and begins to experience the bliss of meditation.Read more at location 700

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While breathing in, count “one, one, one, one…” until the lungs are full of fresh air. While breathing out count “two, two, two, two…” until the lungs are empty of fresh air. Then while breathing in again count “three, three, three, three, three…” until the lungs are full again and while breathing out count again “four, four, four, four…” until the lungs are empty of fresh air. Count up to ten and repeat as many times as necessary to keep the mind focused on the breath.Read more at location 736

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Remember that you are not supposed to continue your counting all the time. As soon as your mind is locked at the nostril tip where the inhalation and exhalation touch and you begin to feel that your breathing is so refined and quiet that you cannot notice inhalation and exhalation separately, you should give up counting. Counting is used only to train the mind to concentrate on one object.Read more at location 755

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Half and full lotus positions are the traditional meditation postures in Asia. And the full lotus is considered the best. It is the most solid by far. Once you are locked into this position, you can be completely immovable for a very long period.Read more at location 897

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There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought.Read more at location 929

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normal conscious thought is also greedy. It grabs all your attention and leaves none to notice its own effect.Read more at location 935

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There are lessons to be learned here about self-identity and how we form it.Read more at location 965

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Focus on the natural and spontaneous movement of the breath. Don’t try to regulate it or emphasize it in any way.Read more at location 984

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Eventually, the breathing process will move along under its own steam, and you will feel no impulse to manipulate it. At this point you will have learned a major lesson about your own compulsive need to control the universe.Read more at location 992

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Don’t think about your problems during your practice. Push them aside very gently. Take a break from all that worrying and planning. Let your meditation be a complete vacation. Trust yourself, trust your own ability to deal with these issues later, using the energy and freshness of mind that you built up during your meditation. Trust yourself this way and it will actually occur.Read more at location 1039

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Mindfulness of breathing is a present-moment awareness. When you are doing it properly, you are aware only of what is occurring in the present. You don’t look back, and you don’t look forward. You forget about the last breath, and you don’t anticipate the next one.Read more at location 1050

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We have spent our entire life developing mental habits that are really quite contrary to the ideal of uninterrupted mindfulness. Extricating ourselves from those habits requires a bit of strategy. As we said earlier, our minds are like cups of muddy water. The object of meditation is to clarify this sludge so that we can see what is going on in there. The best way to do that is just let it sit. Give it enough time and it will settle down. You wind up with clear water. In meditation, we set aside a specific time for this clarifying process. When viewed from the outside, it looks utterly useless. We sit there apparently as productive as a stone gargoyle. Inside, however, quite a bit is happening. The mental soup settles down, and we are left with a clarity of mind that prepares us to cope with the upcoming events of our lives.Read more at location 1069

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During normal activity, you get so caught up in the press of events that the basic issues with which you are dealing are seldom thoroughly handled. They become buried in the unconscious, where they seethe and foam and fester. Then you wonder where all that tension came from.Read more at location 1083

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You want all of your attention free for meditation, not wasted on worries about how you look to others.Read more at location 1093

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There are certain traditional aids that you can employ to set the proper mood. A darkened room with a candle is nice. Incense is nice. A little bell to start and end your sessions is nice. These are paraphernalia, though. They provide encouragement to some people, but they are by no means essential to the practice.Read more at location 1096

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You will probably find it helpful to sit in the same place each time. A special spot reserved for meditation and nothing else is an aid for most people. You soon come to associate that spot with the tranquillity of deep concentration, and that association helps you to reach deep states more quickly.Read more at location 1099

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First thing in the morning is a great time to meditate.Read more at location 1119

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Seasoned meditators manage three or four hours of practice a day. They live ordinary lives in the day-to-day world, and they still squeeze it all in. And they enjoy it. It comes naturally.Read more at location 1134

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As you grow accustomed to the procedure, you can extend your meditation little by little. We recommend that after a year or so of steady practice you should be sitting comfortably for an hour at a time.Read more at location 1139

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Don’t look at the clock until you think the whole meditation period has passed. Actually, you don’t need to consult the clock at all, at least not every time you meditate. In general, you should be sitting for as long as you want to sit. There is no magic length of time. It is best, however, to set yourself a minimum length of time.Read more at location 1156

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If you believe that mere recitation of words will save you, then you only increase your own dependence on words and concepts.Read more at location 1181

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Once you have completed these recitations, lay aside all your troubles and conflicts for the period of practice. Just drop the whole bundle. If they come back into your meditation later, just treat them as what they are, distractions. The practice of universal loving friendliness is also recommended for bedtime and just after arising. It is said to help you sleep well and to prevent nightmares. It also makes it easier to get up in the morning. And it makes you more friendly and open toward everybody, friend or foe, human or otherwise.Read more at location 1261

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Practically speaking, if all of your enemies were well, happy, and peaceful, they would not be your enemies. If they were free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction, neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., they would not be your enemies. The practical approach toward your enemies is to help them overcome their problems, so you can live in peace and happiness.Read more at location 1285

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Therefore, we recommend very strongly that you practice loving friendliness before you start your serious practice of meditation. Repeat the preceding passages very mindfully and meaningfully. As you recite these passages, feel true loving friendliness within yourself first and then share it with others, for you cannot share with others what you do not have within yourself.Read more at location 1298

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Learning to deal with discomfort is the only way you’ll be ready to handle the truck you didn’t see.Read more at location 1346

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So switch the order of events. Do your meditation first. Then read or go to the movies.Read more at location 1433

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Mindfulness is never boring. Look again. Don’t assume that you know what breath is. Don’t take it for granted that you have already seen everything there is to see. If you do, you are conceptualizing the process. You are not observing its living reality. When you are clearly mindful of the breath or of anything else, it is never boring. Mindfulness looks at everything with the eyes of a child, with a sense of wonder. Mindfulness sees every moment as if it were the first and the only moment in the universe. So look again.Read more at location 1449

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matter what the source of your fear, mindfulness is the cure.Read more at location 1468

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When this uncomfortable state arises in meditation, just observe it. Don’t let it rule you. Don’t jump up and run off. And don’t struggle with it and try to make it go away. Just let it be there and watch it closely. Then the repressed material will eventually surface, and you will find out what you have been worrying about.Read more at location 1481

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It should be pointed out that you learn about meditation only by meditating. You learn what meditation is all about and where it leads only through direct experience of the thing itself. Therefore the beginner does not know where he is headed because he has developed little sense of where his practice is leading.Read more at location 1497

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Regretting is only one more way of being unmindful. The instant that you realize that you have been unmindful, that realization itself is an act of mindfulness. So continue the process. Don’t get sidetracked by an emotional reaction.Read more at location 1515

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If a particular sort of obsession is troubling you, you can cancel it out by generating its opposite. Here is an example: If you absolutely hate Charlie, and his scowling face keeps popping into your mind, try directing a stream of love and friendliness toward Charlie, or try contemplating his good qualities. You probably will get rid of the immediate mental image. Then you can get on with the job of meditation.Read more at location 1599

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When we speak of a distraction in insight meditation, we are speaking of any preoccupation that pulls the attention off the breath.Read more at location 1641

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You switch your attention to the distraction only long enough to notice certain specific things about it. What is it? How strong is it? And how long does it last? As soon as you have wordlessly answered these questions, you are through with your examination of that distraction, and you return your attention to the breath.Read more at location 1645

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The crucial thing is to be mindful of what is occurring, not to control what is occurring.Read more at location 1689

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We watch what greed does. We watch how it troubles us and how it burdens others. We notice how it keeps us perpetually unsatisfied, forever in a state of unfulfilled longing. From this firsthand experience, we ascertain at a gut level that greed is an unskillful way to run your life.Read more at location 1708

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If you leave “I” out of the operation, pain is not painful. It is just a pure surging energy flow. It can even be beautiful. If you find “I” insinuating itself in your experience of pain or indeed any other sensation, then just observe that mindfully. Pay bare attention to the phenomenon of personal identification with pain.Read more at location 1797

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Mindfulness is presymbolic. It is not shackled to logic. Nevertheless, mindfulness can be experienced — rather easily — and it can be described, as long as you keep in mind that the words are only fingers pointing at the moon.Read more at location 1860

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If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize the process and say to yourself, “Oh, I am remembering,” that is thinking.Read more at location 1905

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As soon as you are noticing that you have not been noticing, then by definition you are noticing and then you are back again to paying bare attention.Read more at location 1949

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One who attends constantly to what is really going on in the mind achieves the state of ultimate sanity.Read more at location 1987

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Parallel waves of sunlight falling on a piece of paper will do no more than warm the surface. But if that same amount of light, when focused through a lens, falls on a single point, the paper bursts into flames. Concentration is the lens. It produces the burning intensity necessary to see into the deeper reaches of the mind. Mindfulness selects the object that the lens will focus on and looks through the lens to see what is there.Read more at location 2041

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Distractions and interruptions are noticed with the same amount of attention as the formal objects of meditation. In a state of pure mindfulness, your attention just flows along with whatever changes are taking place in the mind.Read more at location 2066

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There is no “me” in a state of pure mindfulness. So there is no self to be selfish.Read more at location 2075

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Mindfulness grows only one way: by continuous practice of mindfulness, by simply trying to be mindful, and that means being patient. The process cannot be forced and it cannot be rushed. It proceeds at its own pace.Read more at location 2098

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One of the most difficult things to learn is that mindfulness is not dependent on any emotional or mental state. We have certain images of meditation. Meditation is something done in quiet caves by tranquil people who move slowly. Those are training conditions. They are set up to foster concentration and to learn the skill of mindfulness. Once you have learned that skill, however, you can dispense with the training restrictions, and you should. You don’t need to move at a snail’s pace to be mindful. You don’t even need to be calm. You can be mindful while solving problems in intensive calculus. You can be mindful in the middle of a football scrimmage. You can even be mindful in the midst of a raging fury. Mental and physical activities are no bar to mindfulness. If you find your mind extremely active, then simply observe the nature and degree of that activity. It is just a part of the passing show within.Read more at location 2126

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One of the most memorable events in your meditation career is the moment when you first realize that you are meditating in the midst of a perfectly ordinary activity.Read more at location 2152

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The most important moment in meditation is the instant you leave the cushion. When your practice session is over, you can jump up and drop the whole thing, or you can bring those skills with you into the rest of your activities.Read more at location 2159

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We specifically cultivate awareness through the seated posture in a quiet place because that’s the easiest situation in which to do so. Meditation in motion is harder. Meditation in the midst of fast-paced noisy activity is harder still. And meditation in the midst of intensely egoistic activities like romance or an argument is the ultimate challenge. Beginners will have their hands full with less stressful activities.Read more at location 2165

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The physical directions are simple. Select an unobstructed area and start at one end. Stand for a minute in an attentive position. Your arms can be held in any way that is comfortable, in front, in back, or at your sides. Then while breathing in, lift the heel of one foot. While breathing out, rest that foot on its toes. Again while breathing in, lift that foot, carry it forward and while breathing out, bring the foot down and touch the floor. Repeat this for the other foot. Walk very slowly to the opposite end, stand for one minute, then turn around very slowly, and stand there for another minute before you walk back. Then repeat the process.Read more at location 2191

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As you go through your day, spend a few seconds every few minutes to check your posture. Don’t do it in a judgmental way. This is not an exercise to correct your posture or to improve your appearance. Sweep your attention down through the body and feel how you are holding it. Make a silent mental note of “walking” or “sitting” or “lying down” or “standing.” It all sounds absurdly simple, but don’t slight this procedure. This is a powerful exercise. If you do it thoroughly, if you really instill this mental habit deeply, it can revolutionize your experience. It taps you into a whole new dimension of sensation, and you feel like a blind man whose sight has been restored.Read more at location 2228

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Profound realizations occur during sitting meditation, but also profound revelations can take place when we really examine our own inner workings in the midst of day-to-day activities. This is the laboratory where we really start to see the mechanisms of our own emotions and the operations of our passions. Here is where we can truly gauge the reliability of our reasoning and glimpse the difference between our true motives and that armor of pretense that we wear to fool ourselves and others.Read more at location 2244

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The concept of wasted time does not exist for a serious meditator. Little dead spaces during your day can be turned to profit. Every spare moment can be used for meditation.Read more at location 2265

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Be mindful of exactly what is taking place right now, even if it is tedious drudgery. Take advantage of moments when you are alone. Take advantage of activities that are largely mechanical. Use every spare second to be mindful. Use all the moments you can.Read more at location 2268

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Try to achieve a daily routine in which there is as little difference as possible between seated meditation and the rest of your experience.Read more at location 2278

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If your meditation isn’t helping you to cope with everyday conflicts and struggles, then it is shallow.Read more at location 2285

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Greed and lust are attempts to “get some of that” for me; hatred and aversion are attempts to place greater distance between “me and that.” All the defilements depend upon the perception of a barrier between self and other, and all of them foster this perception every time they are exercised.Read more at location 2315

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Even when we think of others whose success exceeds our own, we can appreciate their achievement and rejoice in their happiness.Read more at location 2461

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Whenever we say of our adversaries, “May they be successful,” we mean: “May my enemies be free from anger, greed, and jealousy. May they have peace, comfort, and happiness.”Read more at location 2568

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“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” —Albert SchweitzerRead more at location 1612

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“The difference between positive psychology and traditional psychology is that with traditional psychology the ambulance is at the bottom of the cliff and with positive psychology the ambulance is at the top of the cliff.”Read more at location 1619

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“Be happy, and the reason will appear.”Read more at location 1736

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Greatness is always in the moment of the decision,Read more at location 2342

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Successful people understand that time is their friend. In every choice I make, every course of action I take, I always have time in mind: time is my ally.Read more at location 2379

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The bad news is, all those 95 percenters are going to be yanking on you, sitting on you, naysaying and doomsaying on you, and doing their level best to pull you back down. Why? Because if you succeed, it reinforces the fact that they are not where they want to be. They know instinctively that there are only two ways to make their building the highest structure in town: build an even bigger one, or tear down all the others. Since the odds are against them building the big one, and since it takes just too darn long to start seeing any results, and since they are not at all aware of the slight edge, they’re going to take the path of least resistance and go into the demolition business.Read more at location 2408

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Taking responsibility liberates you; in fact, it is perhaps the single most liberating thing there is. Even when it hurts, even when it doesn’t seem fair. When you don’t take responsibility, when you blame others, circumstances, fate, or chance, you give away your power. When you take and retain full responsibility—even when others are wrong or the situation is genuinely unfair—you keep your life’s reins in your own hands.Read more at location 2423

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As the American naturalist John Burroughs put it, “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”Read more at location 2428

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People on the failure curve tend to focus on their past—and it pulls them down. People on the success curve focus on their future. And you can guess what happens: it pulls them up.Read more at location 2469

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People on the success curve don’t wait for the eulogy.Read more at location 2479

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You can’t change the past. You can change the future. Would you rather be influenced by something you can’t change, or by something you can?Read more at location 2491

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You are either improving or diminishing in personal and professional value. You are building toward greater happiness and fulfillment, or deeper unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Your relationships are growing deeper and richer, or growing more stale and distant. You are learning more and more about the truths of life, or slipping deeper and deeper into denial about the truths of life. You are building your long-term security and financial freedom, or dismantling it. And your health is building day by day … or ebbing slowly away.Read more at location 2500

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If you are having a hard time making progress in one area—say, in business—take action to make a small positive change in an unrelated area.Read more at location 2547

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The first time you give up, it’s painful. The second time it’s still painful but now it feels a little familiar, and there is some comfort in familiarity: it is the silent sleepy comfort of carbon monoxide.Read more at location 2647

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Tell your five closest friends about your biggest ambition, and watch how many of them squirm. Why? Because showing them your want (desire) also makes them more acutely aware of their want (lack).Read more at location 2670

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It’s natural to share your enthusiasm with the people in your life, especially those you are closest to—and it’s also useful to remember that people often tend to respond by raining on your parade. When they do, it’s not out of malice or the conscious desire to blunt your excitement. More often it’s simply a form of self-defense. They’d rather not hear about the vision you have, because it reminds them of the one they’ve lost.Read more at location 2673

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our world can be harsh on people who talk about an improved reality. Visions and visionaries make people uncomfortable.Read more at location 2688

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You can gauge the limitations of a person’s life by the size of the problems that get him or her down.Read more at location 2701

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Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do, and that often means living outside the limits of one’s comfort zone. When you’re one out of twenty, you’re always going to be going in the opposite direction from the other nineteen.Read more at location 2737

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Gigantic funerals are held and great crowds, even entire nations, mourn for those who spend their lives not worrying about what others thought.Read more at location 2801

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among high school graduates who do not go on to college, 58 percent—more than half—never read a book again.Read more at location 2870

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Turned out, the more positive the individuals’ outlook, the more productive and creative the team’s interaction—and the greater their actual long-term business success.Read more at location 3616

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You have to start with a plan, but the plan you start with will not be the plan that gets you there.Read more at location 3907

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Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.Read more at location 3924

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(Why, by the way, do those hotels not focus on the demand for sex workers instead of on the ostensible supply?)Read more at location 112

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I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, “Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?” This type of question is a way of silencing a person’s specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman.Read more at location 252

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The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG, which pays for developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street to exist.Read more at location 448

B000FBJCJE a2DD8H5D0AAIYL 67387 Note: these authors seemm too bee constraining theiirr iamginainationaa and ideate imaginary worrllds thatt are ot nlyy very simiolar t our own but have arvhaic coostrainr likee zoing and payng Edit

But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers, so it's tasteful. The houses look like real houses.Read more at location 459

B000FBJCJE a3J03K6OXH6WPZ 68828 Note: booo Edit

You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse, like Captain Kirk beaming down from on high. This would be confusing and irritating to the people around you. It would break the metaphor.Read more at location 626

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And you can't sell drugs in the Metaverse, because you can't get high by looking at something.Read more at location 719

B000FBJCJE a1ZESW1L8L6UD5 107905 Note: can you? Edit

She was a dour, bookish, geeky type who dressed like she was interviewing for a job as an accountant at a funeral parlor.Read more at location 966

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he finally went through a belated, dim-witted epiphany, not a brilliant light shining down from heaven, more like the brown glimmer of a half-dead flashlight from the top of a stepladder:Read more at location 1000

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She just looked at him over the rotating pencil like, how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions?Read more at location 1009

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Disaster' is an astrological term meaning ‘bad star,' ” the Librarian points out. “Sorry—but due to my internal structure, I'm a sucker for non sequiturs.”Read more at location 1871

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Vitaly puts on goggles, hooks himself into a computer on the sound truck, and begins tuning the system. There's a 3-D model of the overpass already in memory. He has to figure out how to sync the delays on all the different speaker clusters to maximize the number of nasty, clashing echoes.Read more at location 2082

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So every few dozen feet there's a large man with erect posture wearing an acid green windbreaker with ENFORCER spelled out across the back. Very conspicuous, which is how they like it. But it's all done with electropigment, so if there's trouble, these guys can turn themselves black by flipping a lapel switch.Read more at location 2102

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Nothing sucks more than being hauled in front of a firing squad against the back wall of the business that you built with your own two hands.Read more at location 2507

B000FBJCJE 376140 Note: Add a note

The Oldsmobile keeps popping. Jason can't think of what it is until he realizes that people are shooting at him. Good thing he let his uncle talk him into springing for full armor!Read more at location 2527

B000FBJCJE 379121 Note: Add a note

A speech with magical force. Nowadays, people don't believe in these kinds of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech—the form that computers understand. The Metaverse in its entirety could be considered a single vast nam-shub, enacting itself on L. Bob Rife's fiber-optic network.Read more at location 3693

B000FBJCJE 554360 Note: Add a note

Now, I want to jump back to an earlier fork in the conversation.” “As you wish. I can handle nested forkings to a virtually infinite depth.”Read more at location 4055

B000FBJCJE 608415 Note: Add a note

Y.T. smiles to herself. She really likes the idea of living in a world where someone like Ng can get off calling someone else bizarre.Read more at location 4188

B000FBJCJE 628247 Note: Add a note

“Chasing Frisbees through the surf. Forever. Eating steaks that grow on trees. Lying beside the fire in a hunting lodge. I haven't installed any testicle-licking simulations yet, but now that you have brought it up, I shall consider it.”Read more at location 4347

B000FBJCJE 652289 Note: Add a note

“You may remember an unexplored fork earlier in our conversation that would have brought us to this same place by another route.Read more at location 4478

B000FBJCJE 671812 Note: Add a note

She realizes halfway down that her blue-and-orange coverall, fly as it may be, is going to be a real attention getter in the middle of the night in the Falabala zone, so she reaches up to her collar, feels a hard disk sewn into the fabric, presses it between thumb and finger until it clicks. Her coverall darkens, the colors shimmer through the electropigment like an oil slick, and then it's black.Read more at location 4557

B000FBJCJE 683921 Note: Add a note

FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, LISP, Pascal, C, PROLOG, FORTH. You talk to the computer in one of these languages, and a piece of software called a compiler converts it into machine language. But you never can tell exactly what the compiler is doing.Read more at location 4907

B000FBJCJE 736179 Note: Add a note

after that it's just a chase scene.Read more at location 5367

B000FBJCJE 805019 Note: Add a note

To write a really good invisible avatar from scratch would take a long time, but he puts one together in several hours by recycling bits and pieces of old projects left behind in his computer. Which is how hackers usually do it.Read more at location 6195

B000FBJCJE 929354 Note: Add a note

A Metaverse vehicle can be as fast and nimble as a quark. There's no physics to worry about, no constraints on acceleration, no air resistance. Tires never squeal and brakes never lock up. The one thing that can't be helped is the reaction time of the user. So when they were racing their latest motorcycle software, holding wild rallies through Downtown at Mach 1, they didn't worry about engine capacity. They worried about the user interface, the controls that enabled the rider to transfer his reactions into the machine, to steer, accelerate, or brake as quickly as he could think.Read more at location 6208

B000FBJCJE 931668 Note: Add a note

“It's, like, one of them drug dealer boats,” Vic says, looking through his magic sight. “Five guys on it. Headed our way.” He fires another round. “Correction. Four guys on it.” Boom. “Correction, they're not headed our way anymore.” Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. “Correction. No boat.”Read more at location 6513

B000FBJCJE 977255 Note: Add a note

“Rife's key realization was that there's no difference between modern culture and Sumerian. We have a huge workforce that is illiterate or alliterate and relies on TV—which is sort of an oral tradition. And we have a small, extremely literate power elite—the people who go into the Metaverse, basically—who understand that information is power, and who control society because they have this semimystical ability to speak magic computer languages.Read more at location 7112

B000FBJCJE 1067259 Note: Add a note

It is so vast and complicated that no one sees more than 10 percent of it; you could spend a year watching it over and over again and keep seeing new things.Read more at location 8003

B000FBJCJE 1200487 Note: Add a note

He was the first and certainly not the last to point out that BIOS actually stands for “Basic Input/Output System,” not “Built-in Operating System” as I have it here (and as it ought to be); but I feel that I am entitled to trample all other considerations into the dirt in my pursuit of a satisfying pun, so this part of the book is unchanged.Read more at location 8210

B000FBJCJE 1231835 Note: Add a note

The result is that as many infant girls die unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died in the one incident at Tiananmen.Read more at location 100

B002MHOCTO 15089 Note: Add a note

In India, a “bride burning”—to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry—takes place approximately once every two hours, but these rarely constitute news. In the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, five thousand women and girls have been doused in kerosene and set alight by family members or in-laws—or, perhaps worse, been seared with acid—for perceived disobedience just in the last nine years.Read more at location 103

B002MHOCTO 15846 Note: Add a note

Less than 1 percent of U.S. foreign aid is specifically targeted to women and girls.Read more at location 111

B002MHOCTO 16649 Note: Add a note

Every year, at least another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination.Read more at location 123

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In India, for example, mothers are less likely to take their daughters to be vaccinated than their sons—that alone accounts for one fifth of India’s missing females—while studies have found that, on average, girls are brought to the hospital only when they are sicker than boys taken to the hospital. All told, girls in India from one to five years of age are 50 percent more likely to die than boys the same age. The best estimate is that a little Indian girl dies from discrimination every four minutes.Read more at location 125

B002MHOCTO 19280 Note: Add a note

To prevent sex-selective abortion, China and India now bar doctors and ultrasound technicians from telling a pregnant woman the sex of her fetus. Yet that is a flawed solution. Research shows that when parents are banned from selectively aborting female fetuses, more of their daughters die as infants. Mothers do not deliberately dispatch infant girls they are obligated to give birth to, but they are lackadaisical in caring for them. A development economist at Brown University, Nancy Qian, quantified the wrenching trade-off: On average, the deaths of fifteen infant girls can be avoided by allowing one hundred female fetuses to be selectively aborted.Read more at location 139

B002MHOCTO 21410 Note: Add a note

The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.Read more at location 143

B002MHOCTO 21828 Note: Add a note

We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world.Read more at location 147

B002MHOCTO 22128 Note: Add a note

Women aren’t the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.Read more at location 166

B002MHOCTO 24933 Note: Add a note

The economic explosion in Asia was, in large part, an outgrowth of the economic empowerment of women.Read more at location 180

B002MHOCTO 27003 Note: Add a note

“Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,” Lawrence Summers wrote when he was chief economist of the World Bank.Read more at location 196

B002MHOCTO 29455 Note: Add a note

Some security experts noted that the countries that nurture terrorists are disproportionally those where women are marginalized. The reason there are so many Muslim terrorists, they argued, has little to do with the Koran but a great deal to do with the lack of robust female participation in the economy and society of many Islamic countries.Read more at location 213

B002MHOCTO 32146 Note: Add a note

We will try to lay out an agenda for the world’s women focusing on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence, including honor killings and mass rape; and maternal mortality, which still needlessly claims one woman a minute. We will lay out solutions such as girls’ education and microfinance, which are working right now.Read more at location 220

B002MHOCTO 33362 Note: Add a note

Malaysia had been embarrassed by public criticism about trafficking, so the police had cracked down on the worst brothels that imprisoned girls against their will. One of those was Rath’s. A modest amount of international scolding had led a government to take action, resulting in an observable improvement in the lives of girls at the bottom of the power pyramid.Read more at location 233

B002MHOCTO 35179 Note: Add a note

Honor killings, sexual slavery, and genital cutting may seem to Western readers to be tragic but inevitable in a world far, far away. In much the same way, slavery was once widely viewed by many decent Europeans and Americans as a regrettable but ineluctable feature of human life. It was just one more horror that had existed for thousands of years. But then in the 1780s a few indignant Britons, led by William Wilberforce, decided that slavery was so offensive that they had to abolish it. And they did. Today we see the seed of something similar: a global movement to emancipate women and girls.Read more at location 236

B002MHOCTO 35885 Note: Add a note

Paradoxically, it is the countries with the most straitlaced and sexually conservative societies, such as India, Pakistan, and Iran, that have disproportionately large numbers of forced prostitutes. Since young men in those societies rarely sleep with their girlfriends, it has become acceptable for them to relieve their sexual frustrations with prostitutes.Read more at location 291

B002MHOCTO 43878 Note: Add a note

at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, not just sexual servitude.Read more at location 361

B002MHOCTO 54142 Note: Add a note

Our own estimate is that there are 3 million women and girls (and a very small number of boys) worldwide who can be fairly termed enslaved in the sex trade. That is a conservative estimate that does not include many others who are manipulated and intimidated into prostitution. Nor does it include millions more who are under eighteen and cannot meaningfully consent to work in brothels. We are talking about 3 million people who in effect are the property of another person and in many cases could be killed by their owner with impunity.Read more at location 373

B002MHOCTO 56359 Note: Add a note

And because of the fear of AIDS, customers prefer younger girls whom they believe are less likely to be infected.Read more at location 400

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Aid groups are also reluctant to acknowledge mistakes, partly because frank discussion of blunders is an impediment in soliciting contributions.Read more at location 484

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The reality is that past efforts to assist girls have sometimes backfired. In 1993, Senator Tom Harkin wanted to help Bangladeshi girls laboring in sweatshops, so he introduced legislation that would have banned imports made by workers under the age of fourteen. Bangladeshi factories promptly fired tens of thousands of these young girls, and many of them ended up in brothels and are presumably now dead of AIDS.Read more at location 485

B002MHOCTO 73142 Note: Add a note

To address these financial pressures, American Assistance for Cambodia started a program called Girls Be Ambitious, which in effect bribes families to keep girls in school. If a girl has perfect attendance in school for one month, her family gets $10.Read more at location 527

B002MHOCTO 79265 Note: Add a note

Yet one thing Kun Sokkea has beside her bed is a photo of the American Overlake students on their campus. In the evenings before she goes to sleep, she sometimes picks up the photo and studies the smiling faces and neat lawns and modern buildings. In her own shack, with her mother sick and often crying, her siblings hungry, it is a window into a magical land where people have plenty to eat and get cured when they fall ill. In such a place, she thinks, everybody must be happy all the time.Read more at location 539

B002MHOCTO 81319 Note: Add a note

America’s schools rarely convey much understanding of the 2.7 billion people (40 percent of the world’s population) who today live on less than $2 a day.Read more at location 553

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People get away with enslaving village girls for the same reason that people got away with enslaving blacks two hundred years ago: The victims are perceived as discounted humans.Read more at location 591

B002MHOCTO 88706 Note: Add a note

One reason for discord is a dispute about how to regard prostitution. The left often refers nonjudgmentally to “sex workers” and tends to be tolerant of transactions among consenting adults. The right, joined by some feminists, refers to “prostitutes” or “prostituted women” and argues that prostitution is inherently demeaning and offensive. The result of this bickering is a lack of cooperation in combatting what everybody believes is abhorrent: forced prostitution and child prostitution.Read more at location 611

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crackdowns don’t work perfectly, but they tend to lead nervous police to demand higher bribes, which reduces profitability for the pimps. Or the police will close down at least those brothels that aren’t managed by other police officers. With such methods, we can almost certainly reduce the number of fourteen-year-old girls who are held in cages until they die of AIDS.Read more at location 633

B002MHOCTO 95297 Note: Add a note

“You don’t have to arrest everybody. You just have to get enough that it sends a ripple effect and changes the calculations. That changes the pimps’ behavior. You can drive traffickers of virgin village girls to fence stolen radios instead.”Read more at location 637

B002MHOCTO 95696 Note: Add a note

During her first three years as a prostitute in Sonagachi, Geeta was not allowed outside and had none of the freedoms that DMSC claims exist. She was beaten regularly with sticks and threatened with a butcher’s knife.Read more at location 674

B002MHOCTO 101258 Note: Add a note

Contradicting the notion that the girls get a decent income, Geeta was never paid a single rupee for her work. It was slave labor, performed under threat of execution. Other women who worked in Sonagachi after DMSC took control offered similar stories.Read more at location 679

B002MHOCTO 102014 Note: Add a note

the customer can pay the brothel owner a few extra rupees for the right not to use a condom. The girl has no say in that.Read more at location 686

B002MHOCTO 102873 Note: Add a note

While the madam spoke with others in the room, gushing about the group’s success, the three of us on the bed asked the prostitute in Hindi to tell us if those things were true. Afraid and timid, the prostitute remained silent until we assured her that we wouldn’t get her in trouble. Barely audible, she told us that almost none of the prostitutes in Sonagachi came with aspirations of becoming a sex worker. Most of them, like herself, were Trafficked…. When I asked her if she wanted to leave Sonagachi, her eyes lit up; before she could say anything, the DMSC official put her hand on my back and said that it was time to move on….Read more at location 690

B002MHOCTO 104085 Note: Add a note

In 1999, Sweden took the opposite approach, criminalizing the purchase of sexual services, but not the sale of them by prostitutes; a man caught paying for sex is fined (in theory, he can be imprisoned for up to six months), while the prostitute is not punished. This reflected the view that the prostitute is more a victim than a criminal.Read more at location 717

B002MHOCTO 107833 Note: Add a note

In poor countries, the law is often irrelevant, particularly outside the capital. Our focus has to be on changing reality, not changing laws.Read more at location 734

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their price will drop,Read more at location 749

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Momm, like many brothel girls, had become addicted to methamphetamines. Often the brothel owners give girls meth to keep them compliant and dependent. In her village, the craving had overwhelmed her, and she was consumed by the need to go back to the brothel and get some meth.Read more at location 827

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“It sure made a difference to that one,”Read more at location 945

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One woman went to the police to report that she had been gang-raped by Akku Yadav and his thugs; the police responded by gang-raping her themselves.Read more at location 999

B002MHOCTO 149967 Note: Add a note

Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.Read more at location 1196

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21 percent of Ghanaian women reported in one survey that their sexual initiation was by rape; 17 percent of Nigerian women said that they had endured rape or attempted rape by the age of nineteen; and 21 percent of South African women reported that they had been raped by the age of fifteen.Read more at location 1201

B002MHOCTO 180397 Note: Add a note

the time of Woineshet’s rape, Ethiopian law explicitly provided that a man could not be prosecuted for violating a woman or girl he later married.Read more at location 1218

B002MHOCTO 182713 Note: Add a note

“Even if you go home, Aberew will go after you again,” the official told her. “So there’s no point in resisting.”Read more at location 1253

B002MHOCTO 188072 Note: Add a note

One study suggests that women perpetrators were involved, along with men, in one quarter of the gang rapes in the Sierra Leone civil war. Typically, women fighters would lure a victim to the rape site, and then restrain her as she was raped by male fighters.Read more at location 1307

B002MHOCTO 196171 Note: Add a note

And no group systematically abuses young women more cruelly than mothers-in-law, who serve as household matriarchs in much of the world and take charge of disciplining the younger women.Read more at location 1318

B002MHOCTO 197815 Note: Add a note

In short, women themselves absorb and transmit misogynistic values, just as men do. This is not a tidy world of tyrannical men and victimized women, but a messier realm of oppressive social customs adhered to by men and women alike.Read more at location 1335

B002MHOCTO 200392 Note: Add a note

(In Pakistan, rapes of boys by heterosexual men are not uncommon and are less stigmatized than the rapes of girls.)Read more at location 1345

B002MHOCTO 201721 Note: Add a note

President Musharraf initially admired Mukhtar’s courage, but he wanted Pakistan to be renowned for a sizzling economy, not notorious for barbaric rapes. Mukhtar’s public comments—including her insistence that rape of poor women was a systemic problem—embarrassed him. So the intelligence services began to lean on Mukhtar to keep quiet. She refused to do so, and the government fired a warning shot: Officials ordered the release of the men who had been convicted of raping her. Mukhtar collapsed in tears.Read more at location 1379

B002MHOCTO 207278 Note: Add a note

Rapes used to be widespread in rural Pakistan, because there was no disincentive. But Mukhtar changed the paradigm, and women and girls began to fight back and go to the police.Read more at location 1475

B002MHOCTO 221294 Note: Add a note

The paradox of honor killings is that societies with the most rigid moral codes end up sanctioning behavior that is supremely immoral: murder.Read more at location 1523

B002MHOCTO 228515 Note: Add a note

The United Nations Population Fund has estimated that there are 5,000 honor killings a year, almost all in the Muslim worldRead more at location 1537

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In short, rape becomes a tool of war in conservative societies precisely because female sexuality is so sacred. Codes of sexual honor, in which women are valued based on their chastity, ostensibly protect women, but in fact theyRead more at location 1544

B002MHOCTO 231687 Note: Add a note

To prevent the outside world from knowing, the Sudanese government punished women who reported rapes or sought medical treatment.Read more at location 1547

B002MHOCTO 232163 Note: Add a note

a United Nations report claims that 90 percent of girls and women over the age of three were sexually abused in parts of Liberia during civil war there.Read more at location 1556

B002MHOCTO 233442 Note: Add a note

The world capital of rape is the eastern Congo.Read more at location 1563

B002MHOCTO 234384 Note: Add a note

The ability to earn a living transforms the women’s lives.Read more at location 1690

B002MHOCTO 253556 Note: Add a note

Eleven percent of the world’s inhabitants live in sub-Saharan Africa, and they suffer 24 percent of the world’s disease burden—which is addressed with less than 1 percent of the world’s health care spending.Read more at location 1800

B002MHOCTO 270105 Note: Add a note

For the 2009 fiscal year, President George W. Bush actually proposed an 18 percent cut in USAID spending for maternal and child care to just $370 million, or about $1.20 per American per year.Read more at location 1802

B002MHOCTO 270377 Note: Add a note

In Ireland, the safest place in the world to give birth, the MMR is just 1 per 100,000 live births.Read more at location 1812

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The highest lifetime risk in the world is in the West African country of Niger, where a girl or woman stands a 1-in-7 chance of dying in childbirth. Overall in sub-Saharan Africa, the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is 1 in 22. India disgraces itself, because for all its shiny new high-rises, an Indian woman still has a 1-in-70 chance of dying in childbirth at some point in her life. In contrast, in the United States, the lifetime risk is 1 in 4,800; in Italy, it’s 1 in 26,600; and in Ireland a woman has only 1 chance in 47,600 of dying in childbirth.Read more at location 1816

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People were much more willing to donate to Rokia than to 21 million hungry people, and even a mention of the larger problem made people less inclined to help her.Read more at location 1833

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People contributed almost twice as much to save one child as to save eight. Social psychologists argue that all this reflects the way our consciences and ethical systems are based on individual stories and are distinct from the parts of our brains concerned with logic and rationality.Read more at location 1836

B002MHOCTO a31NKY4TAHGOGR 275552 Note: so share stories of people in need (via Facebook) and make it easy to donate to them (perhaps providing badges for doing so). do they need to be convinced of the mechanism by which aid will be provided? talk to bae about birth control, be supportive america seems arbitrary; map of censorship, would like to look into why Edit

Indeed, when subjects in experiments are first asked to solve math problems, thus putting in play the parts of the brain that govern logic, afterward they are less generous to the needy.Read more at location 1838

B002MHOCTO 275739 Note: Add a note

In the West, we tend to think of disease and mortality as the province of doctors, but by far the greatest strides in global health have been made by public health specialists. Models of the public health approach include smallpox vaccination programs, oral rehydration therapy to save babies with diarrhea, and campaigns to encourage seat belts and air bags in vehicles. Any serious effort to reduce maternal mortality likewise requires a public health perspective—reducing unwanted pregnancies and providing prenatal care so that last-minute medical crises are less frequent.Read more at location 1888

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Sometimes the most effective approaches aren’t medical at all. For example, one out-of-the-box way to reduce pregnancies is to subsidize school uniforms for girls. That keeps them in school longer, which means that they delay marriage and pregnancy until they are better able to deliver babies. A South African study found that giving girls a $6 uniform every eighteen months increased the chance that they would stay in school and consequently significantly reduced the number of pregnancies they experienced.Read more at location 1892

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So the evolutionary adaptation is that women generally have medium-sized pelvises that permit moderately swift locomotion and allow them to survive childbirth—most of the time.Read more at location 2043

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Humans are the only mammals that need assistance in birth,Read more at location 2046

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disproportionately likely to have anthropoid pelvises, and some experts on maternal health offer that as one reason maternal mortality rates are so high in Africa.Read more at location 2053

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Education is associated with lower desired family size, greater use of contraception, and increased use of hospitals.Read more at location 2056

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The World Bank has estimated that for every one thousand girls who get one additional year of education, two fewer women will die in childbirth.Read more at location 2062

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In one careful study across six countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, on any one day 39 percent of doctors were absent from clinics when they were supposed to be on duty.Read more at location 2078

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During World War I, more American women died in childbirth than American men died in war.Read more at location 2085

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women could vote, suddenly their lives became more important, and enfranchising women ended up providing a huge and unanticipated boost to women’s health.Read more at location 2087

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In most societies, mythological or theological explanations were devised to explain why women should suffer in childbirth, and they forestalled efforts to make the process safer. When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were “supposed” to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband’s testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.Read more at location 2097

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Investments in educating girls resulted in women having more economic value and more influence in society, and that seems to be one reason that greater energy was devoted to reducing maternal mortality.Read more at location 2113

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Over time, the government added obstetricians to its hospitals, and it used its data to see where women were slipping through the cracks—such as those living on the tea estates—and then to open clinics targeting those women.Read more at location 2120

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One study found that giving Vitamin A supplements to pregnant women in Nepal reduced maternal mortality by 40 percent, apparently because that reduced infections in malnourished women.Read more at location 2127

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rural health workers get a $5 bounty for each woman brought in for delivery.Read more at location 2130

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Probably too many women get C-sections in the West, but too few do in Africa.Read more at location 2151

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a study of a fundamentalist Christian church in Indiana whose members were affluent, well-educated, and well-nourished Americans, yet who for spiritual reasons eschewed doctors and hospitals. The group’s maternal mortality ratio was 872 per 100,000 live births. That’s seventy times the rate in the United States as a whole, and it’s almost twice as high as in India today.Read more at location 2154

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Mamitu Gashe, herself an obstetric fistula patient who never attended even elementary school, now regularly performs surgery—a reminder that nonphysicians can perform some jobs we think of as the domain only of doctors.Read more at location 2160

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The fistula hospital does more fistula repairs than any institution in the world,Read more at location 2174

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she didn’t want her legacy to be a Mercedes; she wanted it to be a hospital.Read more at location 2241

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For every 150 unsafe abortions in sub-Saharan Africa, a woman dies; in the United States, the risk is less than 1 in 100,000. So liberals and conservatives should be able to agree on steps that prevent unwanted pregnancies and thus reduce the frequency of abortion.Read more at location 2384

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By some measures, more than one quarter of all maternal deaths could be avoided if there were no unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.Read more at location 2388

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The key to curbing population is often less a technical matter of providing contraceptives and more a sociological challenge of encouraging smaller families. One way to do that is to reduce child mortality, so that parents can be sure that if they have fewer children, they will survive. Perhaps the most effective way to encourage smaller families is to promote education, particularly for girls.Read more at location 2400

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a very strong global correlation between rising education levels and declines in family size. It appears that the most effective contraceptive is education for girls, although birth control supplies are obviously needed as well.Read more at location 2404

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Women are about twice as likely to be infected during heterosexual sex with an HIV-positive partner as men are. That’s because semen has a higher viral load than vaginal secretions do, and because women have more mucous membranes exposed during sex than men.Read more at location 2412

B002MHOCTO 361937 Note: Add a note

Some critics of condoms began spreading the junk science that condoms have pores ten microns in diameter, while the AIDS virus is less than one micron in diameter. That is untrue, and evidence from discordant couples (where one partner has HIV and the other doesn’t) suggests that condoms are quite effective in preventing AIDS, albeit not as effective as abstinence. In El Salvador, the Catholic Church helped push through a law requiring condom packages to carry a warning label declaring that they do not protect against AIDS.Read more at location 2426

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Studies on the impact of abstinence-only programs aren’t conclusive and seem to depend to some extent on the ideology of those conducting the study. But on balance, the evidence suggests that they slightly delay the debut of sexual activity; once it has been initiated, however, kids are less likely to use contraception. The studies suggest that the result is more pregnancies, more abortions, more sexually transmitted diseases, and more HIV.Read more at location 2444

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In any case, for women the lethal risk factor is often not promiscuity but marriage. Routinely in Africa and Asia, women stay safe until they marry, and then they contract AIDS from their husbands.Read more at location 2460

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A woman with a husband is in much more danger than a girl in a brothel.”Read more at location 2464

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Governments should encourage male circumcision, which reduces HIV risk significantly,Read more at location 2496

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Poverty Action Lab—which does some of the finest research on development anywhere—Read more at location 2502

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third approach was to provide students with free uniforms to encourage them to stay in school longer; that cost about $12 per student and did reduce pregnancies. Using their comparisons with the control areas, the researchers calculated that the cost was $750 per pregnancy averted. The fourth and by far the most cost-effective approach was also the simplest: warning of the perils of sugar daddies. Schoolchildren were shown a brief video of the dangers of teenage girls going out with older men, and then were informed that older men have much higher HIV infection rates than boys. Few students had been aware of that crucial fact.Read more at location 2507

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This simple program was a huge success: It cost less than $1 per student, and a pregnancy could be averted for only $91. It’s also a reminder of the need for relentless empiricism in developing policies. Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither.Read more at location 2514

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All told, some 25 percent of AIDS care worldwide is provided by church-related groups.Read more at location 2527

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George W. Bush sponsored his presidential initiative to fight AIDS—the best single thing he ever did, arguably saving more than 9 million lives.Read more at location 2558

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Arthur Brooks, an economist, has found that the one third of Americans who attend worship services at least once a week are “inarguably more charitable in every measurable way” than the two thirds who are less religious.Read more at location 2570

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Brooks does find, however, that while liberals are less generous with their own money, they are more likely to favor government funding of humanitarian causes.Read more at location 2572

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We need funding for Teach the World, an international version of Teach For America, to send young people abroad for a year, a term that would then be renewable. That would offer an important new channel of foreign assistance to support girls’ education in poor countries, and it would also offer young Americans a potentially life-changing encounter with the developing world.Read more at location 2580

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When Muhammad introduced Islam in the seventh century, it was a step forward for women.Read more at location 2665

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Jail is sometimes the safest place for a bold Afghan woman.Read more at location 2757

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A society that has more men than women—particularly young men, is often associated with crime or violence.Read more at location 2793

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Countries that repress women also tend to be backward economically, adding to the frustrations that nurture terrorism.Read more at location 2810

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The best role for Americans who want to help Muslim women isn’t holding the microphone at the front of the rally but writing the checks and carrying the bags in the back.Read more at location 2862

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They concluded that each additional year of primary education leads a girl to have .26 fewer children—aRead more at location 2978

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One study in India found that 12 percent of all schools were closed at any time because teachers had not gone to work that day.Read more at location 2984

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One of the most cost-effective ways to increase school attendance is to deworm students.Read more at location 2985

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Increasing school attendance by building schools ends up costing about $100 per year for every additional student enrolled. Boosting attendance by deworming children costs only $4 per year per additional student enrolled.Read more at location 2991

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Because corporations want their brand to be associated only with the best, they often support gold-plated projects that are very impressive but not particularly cost-effective.Read more at location 3002

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Another tantalizingly simple way to boost girls’ education is to iodize salt.Read more at location 3003

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In essence, Oportunidades encourages poor families to invest in their children, the way rich families already do, thus breaking the typical transmission path of poverty from generation to generation. Oportunidades is particularly beneficial for girls, and some early studies suggest it will pay for itself by creating more human capital to power Mexico’s economy. The program is now widely copied in other developing countries, and even New York City is experimenting with paying bribes to improve school attendance.Read more at location 3033

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These kinds of grassroots efforts usually achieve more than the grand UN conferences that receive far more attention. We highlight Camfed partly because we believe an international women’s movement needs to focus less on holding conventions or lobbying for new laws, and more time in places like rural Zimbabwe, listening to communities and helping them get their girls into schools.Read more at location 3164

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As study after study has taught us, there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.Read more at location 3198

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“Girls are just as good as boys,” he explained.Read more at location 3228

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Microfinance has done more to bolster the status of women, and to protect them from abuse, than any laws could accomplish. Capitalism, it turns out, can achieve what charity and good intentions sometimes cannot.Read more at location 3241

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Many Pakistani women are not supposed to leave the house without their husbands’ permission, but husbands tolerate the insubordination because it is profitable.Read more at location 3246

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Several studies suggest that when women gain control over spending, less family money is devoted to instant gratification and more for education and starting small businesses.Read more at location 3329

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One way to do that is to put more money in the hands of women. One early pair of studies found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine, and housing, and consequently children are healthier.Read more at location 3351

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One implication is that donor countries should nudge poor countries to adjust their laws to give more economic power to women. For example, it should be routine for a widow to inherit her husband’s property, rather than for it to go to his brothers. It should be easy for women to hold property and bank accounts, and countries should make it much easier for microfinance institutions to start banks. Women now own just 1 percent of the world’s titled land, according to the UN. That has to change.Read more at location 3371

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Local people reported that they were significantly less likely to have to pay a bribe in the villages run by women.Read more at location 3411

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Follow-up research did find that after a village had once had a female leader, this bias against women chiefs disappeared. Women leaders were then judged by gender-neutral standards. Such research suggests that quotas for local female leaders may be worthwhile, because they overcome the initial hurdle that blocks women candidates. An Indian-style quota of women officeholders seems to break down gender barriers so that afterward the political system becomes more democratic and open.Read more at location 3417

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maternal mortality in the United States declined significantly only once women gained the right to vote:Read more at location 3421

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As Professor Miller notes, opponents of women’s political participation have often made the argument that if women get involved in outside activities, then children will suffer. In fact, the evidence from our own history is that women’s political participation has proved to be of vast, life-saving benefit to America’s children.Read more at location 3434

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In the late 1920s, street thugs would sometimes seize a woman with short hair and pull out all of her hair or even cut off her breasts. If you want to look like a man, they said, this will do it.Read more at location 3564

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It was Mao who proclaimed: “Women hold up half the sky.”Read more at location 3569

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China is an important model because it was precisely its emancipation of girls that preceded and enabled its economic takeoff.Read more at location 3598

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Implicit in what we’re saying about China is something that sounds shocking to many Americans: Sweatshops have given women a boost.Read more at location 3616

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Labor-intensive factories would create large numbers of jobs for women, and they would bring in more capital—and gender equality.Read more at location 3625

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challenges are insurmountable only until the moment that they’re surmounted. And we’re gaining a much better tactical sense of how to do the surmounting.Read more at location 3909

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That means that Girls Learn isn’t the most efficient charity around to support girls’ education abroad, since far more money goes to administrative costs in Manhattan than to keep Pakistani girls in school. Still, the purpose of Girls Learn isn’t just to support girls’ education abroad but also to create exchanges and build the basis for a movement at home. As an educational venture for the American girls, it’s a bargain. American high school students who might otherwise be obsessed with designer bags are sending their spending money abroad so that girls in India can have notebooks.Read more at location 3959

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Two scholars, Chaim Kaufmann and Robert Pape, calculate that for sixty years Britain sacrificed an annual average of 1.8 percentage points of its GNP because of its moral commitment to ending slavery. That is an astonishing total, cumulatively amounting to more than an entire year’s GNP for Great Britain (for the United States today, it would be the equivalent of sacrificing more than $14 trillion), a significant and sustained sacrifice in the British standard of living. It was a heroic example of a nation placing its values above its interests.Read more at location 4012

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Resist the temptation to oversell. The humanitarian community has undermined its credibility with its exaggerated predictions (journalists joke that aid groups have predicted ten of the last three famines).Read more at location 4172

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it may help women just as much if boys and men are circumcised, for that slows the spread of AIDS and reduces the chance that men will infect their partners.Read more at location 4177

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If there were a fifth principle, it would be: Don’t pay too much attention to the first four. Any movement needs to be flexible; it should be relentlessly empirical and open to different strategies in different places.Read more at location 4181

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The effect was huge: “introducing cable television is equivalent to roughly five years of female education,” the professors report.Read more at location 4199

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As Sir John Templeton said, “Self-improvement comes mainly from trying to help others.”Read more at location 4264

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Harry couldn’t control the flow of drugs,92 but he was discovering he could control the flow of ideas—and it was not only scientists Harry believed he had to silence.Read more at location 331

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Indeed, Harry took jazz as yet more proof that marijuana drives people insane.Read more at location 352

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advice on drug raids to his men was always “Shoot first.”Read more at location 361

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She knew in her gut this was wrong and had to change, and she made a promise to herself: “I just plain decided one day I wasn’t going to do anything119 or say anything unless I meant it. Not ‘Please, sir.’ Nor ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Nothing. Unless I meant it. You have to be poor and black to know how many times you can get knocked in the head for trying to do something as simple as that.”Read more at location 382

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Confronted with a real addict, up close, the hatred fell away.Read more at location 476

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One day, Harry Anslinger was told that there were also white women, just as famous as Billie, who had drug problems—but he responded to them rather differently. He called Judy Garland, another heroin addict, in to see him. They had a friendly chat,181 in which he advised her to take longer vacations between pictures, and he wrote to her studio,182 assuring them she didn’t have a drug problem at all. When he discovered that a Washington society hostess he knew183—“a beautiful, gracious lady,” he noted—had an illegal drug addiction, he explained he couldn’t possibly arrest her because “it would destroy . . . the unblemished reputation of one of the nation’s most honored families.” He helped her to wean herself off her addiction slowly, without the law becoming involved.Read more at location 531

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Many white Americans did not want to accept that black Americans might be rebelling because they had lives like Billie Holiday’s—locked into Pigtowns and banned from developing their talents. It was more comforting to believe that a white powder was the cause of black anger, and that getting rid of the white powder would render black Americans docile and on their knees once again. (The history of this would be traced years later in Michelle Alexander’s remarkable book The New Jim Crow.)Read more at location 561

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White had been a journalist in San Francisco in the 1930s until he applied to join the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The personality test given to all applicants on Anslinger’s orders found that he was a sadist.205 He quickly rose through the bureau’s ranks.Read more at location 600

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George White, it turns out, had a long history of planting drugs on women. He was fond of pretending to be an artist215 and luring women to an apartment in Greenwich Village where he would spike their drinks with LSD216 to see what would happen. One of his victims was a young actress217 who happened to live in his building, while another was a pretty blond waitress in a bar. After she failed to show any sexual interest in him, he drugged her218 to see if that would change. “I toiled whole-heartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun,” White boasted. “Where else [but in the Bureau of Narcotics] could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage219 with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?” He may well have been high when he busted Billie for getting high.Read more at location 623

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Callender had built a clinic for heroin addicts in his church,244 and he pleaded for Billie to be allowed to go there to be nursed back to health. His reasoning was simple, he told me in 2013: addicts, he said, “are human beings, just like you and me.” Punishment makes them sicker; compassion can make them well.Read more at location 677

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Her best friend, Maely Dufty, insisted to anyone who would listen that Billie had been effectively murdered by a conspiracy to break her, orchestrated by the narcotics police—but what could she do? At Billie’s funeral, there were swarms of police cars,252 because they feared their actions against her would trigger a riot.Read more at location 696

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It is easy to judge Harry Anslinger. But if we are honest, I suspect that everybody who has ever loved an addict—everybody who has ever been an addict—has this impulse in them somewhere. Destroy the addiction. Kill the addiction. Throttle it with violence. Harry Anslinger is our own darkest impulses, given a government department and a license to kill.Read more at location 703

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Henry believed, in his Social Darwinist way, that they were weaklings who had survived only because they had been stupidly coddled by society; in a state of nature,Read more at location 739

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the Harrison Act didn’t give the government the authority to punish doctors who believed it was in the best interests of their addicted patients to prescribe them heroin.Read more at location 750

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by driving up the cost of drugs by more than a thousand percent, the new policies meant addicts were forced to commit crime to get their next fix.Read more at location 793

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The men, he wrote, usually became thieves; the women often became prostitutes.Read more at location 796

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“The United States government, as represented by its [anti-drug] officers,” Henry explained, had just become “the greatest and most potent maker of criminals in any recent century.”23 And every time Harry Anslinger created new drug criminals, he created new reasons for his department to be saved—and to grow.Read more at location 797

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The mayor of Los Angeles26 came out and celebrated the clinic as a great gift to the city, and the local federal prosecutor announced that these clinics accomplished “more good . . . in one day than all the prosecutions in one month.”Read more at location 811

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Besides, he said, he had proof that his way worked. Since the bureau’s crackdown began, the number of addicts had fallen dramatically, to just twenty thousand in the whole country. Years later, a historian named David Courtwright put in a Freedom of Information request to find out how this figure was calculated—and found that it was simply made up. The Treasury Department’s top officials had privately said it was “absolutely worthless.”Read more at location 863

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The book contained a prediction. If this drug war continues, Henry Smith Williams wrote, there will be a five-billion-dollar drug smuggling industry in the United States in fifty years’ time. He was right almost to the exact year.Read more at location 903

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He acted as the first “drug czar” not just for the United States, but for the world.Read more at location 915

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His agents told him none of these claims6 were true. One of them later gave an interview in which he said: “There was no evidence7 for Anslinger’s accusations, but that never stopped him.” But once again, Harry had tapped into the deepest fears of his time and ensured that they ran right through his department, swelling his budget as they went. Whatever America was afraid of—blacks, poor people, Communists—he showed how the only way to deal with the fear was to deal with drugs, his way.Read more at location 930

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At times, as I read through Harry’s ever-stranger arguments, I wondered: How could a man like this have persuaded so many people? But the answers were lying there, waiting for me, in the piles of letters he received from members of the public, from senators, and from presidents. They wanted to be persuaded. They wanted easy answers to complex fears. It’s tempting to feel superior—to condescend to these people—but I suspect this impulse is there in all of us. The public wanted to be told that these deep, complex problems—race, inequality, geopolitics—came down to a few powders and pills, and if these powders and pills could be wiped from the world, these problems would disappear. It is a natural human instinct to turn our fears into symbols, and destroy the symbols, in the hope that it will destroy the fear. It is a logic that keeps recurring throughout human history, from the Crusades to the witch hunts to the present day. It’s hard to sit with a complex problem, such as the human urge to get intoxicated, and accept that it will always be with us, and will always cause some problems (as well as some pleasures). It is much more appealing to be told a different message—that it can be ended. That all these problems can be over, if only we listen, and follow.Read more at location 962

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His opponents offered studies, facts, figures about how prohibition had not worked. Anslinger kept coming back with anecdotes, almost always sexual:Read more at location 990

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At this moment, the heroin clinics are being shut down by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics across the United States. This is a hinge point in history. It is the moment when the control of drugs is transferred to the most dangerous people. As the result of the Harrison Act and its subsequent hard-line interpretation by Harry’s bureau, it is passing from Henry Smith Williams and his colleagues to Arnold Rothstein and his thugs. It wasn’t by the law of nature. It was by political decree.Read more at location 1117

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I kept thinking of all the dry sociology studies I had been reading about the drug war—and they began to make sense. They explain that when a popular product is criminalized, it does not disappear. Instead, criminals start to control the supply and sale of the product. They have to get it into the country, transport it to where it’s wanted, and sell it on the street. At every stage, their product is vulnerable. If somebody comes along and steals it, they can’t go to the police or the courts to get it back. So they can only defend their property one way: by violence.Read more at location 1153

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The police didn’t want to investigate the murder—they didn’t want to lift the lid and unleash on themselves all the criminal and official forces swirling around Rothstein’s corpse.Read more at location 1221

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The drug war analyst Charles Bowden says there are in reality two drug wars going on: there is the war on drugs, where the state wages war on the users and addicts, and then there is the war for drugs,64 where the criminals fight each other to control the trade. The war for drugs was launched in earnest in the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan as Arnold Rothstein lay bleeding. There would be many more bullets, but I was going to learn on my journey that Arnold Rothstein has not yet died. Every time he is killed, a harder and more vicious version of him emerges to fill the space provided by prohibition for a global criminal industry. Arnold Rothstein is the start of a lineup of criminals that runs through the Crips and the Bloods and Pablo Escobar to Chapo Guzman—each more vicious because he was strong enough to kill the last. As Harry Anslinger wrote in 1961: “One group rose to power over the corpses of another.”65 It is Darwinian evolution66 armed with a machine gun and a baggie of crack.Read more at location 1232

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When we hear about “drug-related violence,” we picture somebody getting high and killing people. We think the violence is the product of the drugs. But in fact, it turns out this is only a tiny sliver of the violence. The vast majority is like Chino’s violence—to establish, protect, and defend drug territory in an illegal market, and to build a name for being consistently terrifying so nobody tries to take your property or turf.Read more at location 1356

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Professor Paul Goldstein of the University of Illinois conducted a detailed study in which he and his team looked at every killing identified as “drug-related” in New York City in 1986. It turned out 7.5 percent of the killings took place after a person took drugs and their behavior seemed to change. Some 2 percent were the result of addicts trying to steal to feed their habit and it going wrong. And more than three quarters—the6 vast majority—were like Chino’s attacks. They weren’t caused by drugs, any more than Al Capone’s killings were caused by alcohol. They were, Goldstein showed, caused by prohibition.Read more at location 1359

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From about eight years old, he pushed his hair up, demanded to be called Jason, and put socks down his underwear. His grandmother asked him why, and he said that “being a girl sucks. And in my life, it did suck.”Read more at location 1420

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Scientists quickly realized the people in most danger were gay men and injecting drug users who shared needles. They recommended handing out clean needles as a matter of urgency. The Scottish city of Glasgow—which had a massive drug injection problem—became one of the first in the world to do this. As a result, fewer than 2 percent9 of their injectors became HIV positive. In New York City, they refused to do it. So by 1992, 50 percent of the city’s injectors were HIV positive—including Deborah.Read more at location 1431

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In prison, they were constantly learning about new crimes and new techniques and graduating from this university back onto the streets.Read more at location 1510

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“We’re not demanding anything that’s alien,” he said. “We want justice . . . Not just on the Upper West Side, but in Brownsville, Brooklyn, too! Not just in City Hall, but in Jamaica, Queens! . . . Now statistically we know who smokes marijuana at higher rates. They don’t look like me. They don’t look like you. They look like [Michael] Bloomberg [then the mayor of New York]. But they don’t face the collateral consequences of being deported, of having your housing taken, your financial aid stripped.”Read more at location 1607

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He called this protest “a Tale of Two Cities.” Everybody gathered here knew the raw fact that drug use is evenly distributed throughout New York City—in fact, the evidence suggests white people are slightly more likely15 to use and sell drugs—but in his neighborhood there is crackdown, violence, and warfare, while in the richer, paler neighborhoods there is freedom and rehab for the few who fall through the cracks. Harry Anslinger’s priorities and prejudices are still in place.Read more at location 1613

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“A human is capable of anything if you’re in fucked up situations. You’d never drink your piss, but try not drinking anything for twenty days.”Read more at location 1650

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Milton Friedman calculated that it caused an additional ten thousand murders a year in the United States. That’s the equivalent of more than three 9/11s every single year. Professor Miron argues this is an underestimate. Take the drug trade away from criminals, he calculates, and it would reduce the homicide rate in the United States by between 25 and 75 percent.Read more at location 1657

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at every level, there is a war on drugs, a war for drugs, and a culture of terror, all created by prohibition.Read more at location 1726

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Leigh had been busting people for drug possession like this for years. Her cops had clear orders: Go for numbers. Get the maximum possible arrests. Don’t worry about how severe the offense is. If a person is found with any drugs at all, even the tiniest roach, bust them.Read more at location 1743

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But she was gathering intelligence that was vital to the safety of black people in this town.Read more at location 1799

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Leigh would always know she made a difference in Elkton, getting violent racists put away. Thanks to her, fewer Americans were terrorized.Read more at location 1814

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Yet all over the United States—all over the world—police officers were noticing something strange. If you arrest a large number of rapists, the amount of rape goes down. If you arrest a large number of violent racists, the number of violent racist attacks goes down. But if you arrest a large number of drug dealers, drug dealing doesn’t go down.Read more at location 1827

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Whenever her force arrested gang members, it appeared to actually cause an increase in violence, especially homicides.Read more at location 1841

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Professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University has studied the murder statistics4 and found that “statistical analysis shows consistently that higher [police] enforcement [against drug dealers] is associated with higher homicide, even controlling for other factors.” This effect is confirmed in many other studies.Read more at location 1850

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Leigh tried to get back to work, but this time she knew too much. It is hard to be Harry Anslinger with your eyes and your mind open.Read more at location 1882

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The lesson of ending alcohol prohibition, she had come to believe, is that there is a way to actually stop this violence: legalize and regulate the drug trade.Read more at location 1884

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The 1993 National Household Survey10 on Drug Abuse found that 19 percent of drug dealers were African American, but they made up 64 percent of the arrests for it. Largely as a result of this disparity, there was an outcome that was more startling still. In 1993, in the death throes of apartheid, South Africa imprisoned 853 black men per hundred thousand in the population. The United States imprisons 4,919 black men per hundred thousand (versus only 943 white men). So because of the drug war and the way it is enforced, a black man was far more likely to be jailed in the Land of the Free than in the most notorious white supremacist society in the world.Read more at location 1890

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Indeed, at any given time,11 40 to 50 percent of black men between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five are in jail, on probation, or have a warrant out for their arrest, overwhelmingly for drug offenses.Read more at location 1896

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Yet Leigh was—as she would see later—acting as part of a racist machine, against her own intentions.Read more at location 1903

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“Fogg, you know you’re right12 they are using drugs there [but] you know what? If we go out and we start targeting those individuals, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians, they know all of the big folks in government. If we start targeting them, and their children, you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to get a phone call and they’re going to shut us down. You know that, Fogg? You know what’s going to happen? There goes your overtime. There’s the money that you’re making. So let’s just go after the weakest link. Let’s go after those who can’t afford the attorneys, those who we can lock up.”Read more at location 1909

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More than 50 percent of Americans have breached the drug laws. Where a law is that widely broken, you can’t possibly enforce it against every lawbreaker. The legal system would collapse under the weight of it. So you go after the people who are least able to resist, to argue back, to appeal—the poorest and most disliked groups. In the United States, they are black and Hispanic people, with a smattering of poor whites.Read more at location 1915

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We humans are good at suppressing our epiphanies, especially when our salaries and our friendships depend on it.Read more at location 1924

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Neither can see the other side’s ghosts. They can only hate.Read more at location 1934

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They have to stamp their boots and jangle their chains in rhythm to the song, as though they are the chorus line in some dystopian Broadway musical.Read more at location 2009

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Anslinger said addicts were “lepers” who needed to be “quarantined,” and so Arpaio has built a leper colony7 for them in the desert.Read more at location 2042

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The guards have also ordered them to chant warnings that they will be given electric shocks if they dare to talk back:Read more at location 2052

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in the jails and prisons of Arizona, several inmates have been tasered to death.Read more at location 2059

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they live in a state of constant hunger.Read more at location 2071

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The guards, the women say, openly mock and abuse them:Read more at location 2074

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“If I speak the truth to you I will go to the Hole and it’s awful, you have nothing. Please understand, I’d like to talk to you but I can’t. They are watching us,” it says. “We all got in trouble yesterday after you left. Please don’t let no-one see this note.”Read more at location 2082

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This use of solitary confinement is a standard punishment in American prisons. Not long before this, a mentally disabled man in another Arizona prison called Mark Tucker was kept in solitary for so many years, with his pleas for a cellmate refused, that he eventually set himself on fire. In the hospital, with 80 percent of his body burned, he was informed that the Department of Corrections was charging him $1.8 million to pay for the medical care12 to treat his injuries.Read more at location 2106

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Some 90 percent of the inmates, he tells me, “are here because of a drug-related problem,” and virtually all of them are from traumatized backgrounds. “They grow up with no alternatives,” he says. “They start with family problems they cannot manage.”Read more at location 2112

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The United States now imprisons more people14 for drug offenses than Western European nations imprison for all crimes combined. No human society has ever before imprisoned this high a proportion of its population. It is now so large that if all U.S. prisoners15 were detained in one place, they would rank as the thirty-fifth most populous state of the Union.Read more at location 2122

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From the liberal state of New York to the liberal state of California, the jailing and torture of addicts is routine. To pick just one kind: the Justice Department estimates that 216,000 people are raped in these prisons every year. (This is the number of rape victims, not the number of rapes—that is far higher.)Read more at location 2126

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In China, addicts are often sent to hard labor camps, where they are forced to do backbreaking manual work as punishment. In Russia, Thailand, much of South America . . . the list goes on. This is all standard.Read more at location 2131

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The drug war has turned the United States into a shining tent city on a hill, inspiring the world to imitation.Read more at location 2134

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She was here because a year ago,17 a man had approached her on the street in Phoenix and said he would give her a bag of meth if she gave him a blowjob. She said yes, and so she was detained close to death row prisoners. All her life, she had been periodically caged, either for being addicted to drugs, or for selling her body to get them.Read more at location 2146

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The autopsy found that her body was badly burned. Her eyeballs were, it was later explained, “as dry as parchment.”29 Three prison officers were fired30 soon after the incident. No prison officer involved ever faced charges.Read more at location 2178

B00OZM4ANM 327002 Note: Add a note

One of the men in charge of this particular prison, and those like it across Arizona, was Chuck Ryan, who worked all his life in the Arizona Department of Corrections, except for one interlude when, he was a consultant for the Bush administration on how to handle the prison system in Iraq, a period that culminated in the Abu Ghraib scandal.Read more at location 2184

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kids in Missouri, where the boy would often ask about his mother. Then one day, ten years later, Richard came home to find the house on fire. He only found out later what happened: his stepson had raped and murdered Ritchie and his entire family and burned down their home.Read more at location 2236

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the United States government—determined to achieve Harry Anslinger’s mission of spreading the drug war to every country on earth—had decided to train an elite force within Mexico to win the war on drugs. The United States brought them to Fort Bragg13 to provide the best training, intelligence, and military equipment from America’s 7th Special Forces Group. Their motto was “Not even death14 will stop us.” Once it was over and they had learned all they could and received all the weapons they wanted, these expensively trained men went home and defected, en masse,15 to work for the Gulf Cartel. These breakaways16 called themselves the Zetas. It would be as if the Navy Seals defected from the U.S. Army to help the Crips take over Los Angeles—and succeeded.Read more at location 2357

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Under prohibition, he explains, if you are the first to abandon a moral restraint, you gain a competitive advantage over your rivals, and get to control more of the drug market.Read more at location 2468

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Prohibition, Bourgois explains in his writing, creates a system in which the most insane and sadistic violence has a sane and functional logic. It is required. It is rewarded.Read more at location 2488

B00OZM4ANM 373364 Note: Add a note

Why have these drug gangs been able to capture Mexico, when drug gangs in the United States can’t? As I tried to understand this, I started to picture prohibited drugs as a river being redirected to wash across a town. If a river washes into a skyscraper, it might erode the walls and break some windows. But if it washes into a wooden house, it will wash it away entirely. In Mexico, the foundations of law and democracy are made of wood—it was governed by one semidictatorial party for seven decades until 2000, so a culture of feeling that the law is something citizens write together and should obey together has not yet properly developed. And the river is flowing much faster and it is carrying much more water relative to its surroundings: in Juárez, it is believed that 60 to 70 percent38 of the economy runs on laundered drug money, while drug money represents a vastly smaller fraction of the U.S. economy.Read more at location 2500

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Angel—the kid who had testified at the trial—was found dead along with his family, just as Sergio had promised.Read more at location 2666

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She was approached by rival cartel members who said they could deal with Sergio if she wanted. Some of her family were tempted—but Marisela refused. She believed in justice, not violence.Read more at location 2674

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Everybody in the country was watching and asking—If a nurse with no resources and no money can find a murderer, how come the police can’t find him, with everything they’ve got? What is happening to our country?Read more at location 2694

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“If he’s with the Zetas, we’re not going to be able to do anything, because they run the state,” they told her. “If we do a bust, it’s because they allow us to do it. We don’t bust people just like that.” They were apologetic, but they explained that the Zetas give them money if they serve them and death if they don’t.Read more at location 2700

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“Prohibition, conceived as a moral attempt to improve the American way of life, would ultimately cast the nation into a turmoil. One cannot help but think in retrospect that Prohibition, by depriving Americans of their ‘vices,’ only created the avenues through which organized crime gained its firm foothold.”Read more at location 2738

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She has remained at her post as chief crime reporter for the Juárez newspaper El Diario even as her colleagues are murdered all around her.Read more at location 2755

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“Mexico is not deciding this policy . . . This war, this criminalization strategy, is imposed by the U.S. government.”Read more at location 2757

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Just as Henry Smith Williams had to be crushed by Anslinger for showing there was a better alternative to prohibition, so did Leopoldo Salazar. Harry started demanding that he be fired. He instructed Mexico’s representative at the League of Nations that addicts “were criminals first18 and addicts afterwards”—and before long, on American orders, he was forced from office.19 But Mexico wouldn’t surrender its convictions for long: a few years later, it resumed providing narcotics legally to addicts who needed them, in order to smother the new rise of the cartels. Harry responded by immediately cutting off the entire country’s supply of opiates for pain relief in its hospitals. Mexicans literally writhed in agony.20 Mexico now had no choice. Its government started to fight the drug war obediently, and the U.S. Treasury’s officials declared: “This is a notable victory for Harry21 Anslinger.”Read more at location 2772

B00OZM4ANM 416939 Note: Add a note

The U.S. government has approached Mexico with the same threat as the cartels—plata o plomo. Silver or lead. We can give you economic “aid” to fight this war, or we can wreck your economy if you don’t. Your choice.Read more at location 2781

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It was such an implausible mission that in one marijuana field in Hawaii, he was taken hostage by the local drug dealers, because when he told them he was there to see what happened when mongooses ate marijuana, they thought it was the worst police cover story they had ever heard.Read more at location 2817

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In West Bengal, a group of 150 elephants smashed their way into a warehouse and drank a massive amount of moonshine. They got so drunk7 they went on a rampage and killed five people, as well as demolishing seven concrete buildings. If you give hash to male mice, they become horny and seek out females—but then they find “they can barely crawl8 over the females, let alone mount them,” so after a little while they yawn and start licking their own penises.Read more at location 2829

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In Vietnam, the water buffalo have always shunned the local opium plants. They don’t like them. But when the American bombs started to fall all around them during the war, the buffalo left their normal grazing grounds, broke into the opium fields, and began to chew. They would then look a little dizzy and dulled. When they were traumatized, it seems, they wanted—like the mongoose, like us—to escape from their thoughts.Read more at location 2834

B00OZM4ANM 425380 Note: Add a note

Only 10 percent9 of drug users have a problem with their substance. Some 90 percent of people who use a drug—the overwhelming majority—are not harmed by it. This figure comes not from a pro-legalization group, but from the United Nations Office on Drug Control, the global coordinator of the drug war. Even William Bennett,10 the most aggressive drug czar in U.S. history, admits: “Non-addicted users still comprise the vast bulk of our drug-involved population.”Read more at location 2839

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For example, in 1995, the World Health Organization12 (WHO) conducted a massive scientific study of cocaine and its effects. They discovered that “experimental and occasional use are by far the most common types of use, and compulsive/dysfunctional [use] is far less common.” The U.S. government threatened to cut off funding to the WHO unless they suppressed the report. It has never been published; we know what it says only because it was leaked.Read more at location 2850

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Some drug use causes horrible harm, as I know very well, but the overwhelming majority of people who use prohibited drugs do it because they get something good out of it—a fun night out dancing, the ability to meet a deadline, the chance of a good night’s sleep, or insights into parts of their brain they couldn’t get to on their own. For them, it’s a positive experience, one that makes their lives better. That’s why so many of them choose it. They are not suffering from false consciousness, or hubris. They don’t need to be stopped from harming themselves, because they are not harming themselves. As the American writer Nick Gillespie puts it: “Far from our drugs controlling us, by and large we control our drugs; as with alcohol, the primary motivation is to enjoy ourselves, not to destroy ourselves . . . There is such a thing as responsible drug use, and it is the norm, not the exception.”Read more at location 2863

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“The ubiquity19 of drug use is so striking,” the physician Andrew Weil concludes, that “it must represent a basic human appetite.” Professor Siegel claims the desire to alter our consciousness is “the fourth drive”20 in all human minds, alongside the desire to eat, drink, and have sex—and it is “biologically inevitable.” It provides us with moments of release and relief.Read more at location 2887

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Harry Anslinger said that drug use represents “nothing less than25 an assault on the foundations of Western civilization,” but here, at the actual foundations of Western civilization, drug use was ritualized and celebrated.Read more at location 2902

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One day in 415 B.C., a partygoing general named Alcibiades smuggled some of the mystery drug out and took it home for his friends to use at their parties. Walton writes: “Caught in possession31 with intent to supply, he was the first drug criminal.”Read more at location 2914

B00OZM4ANM 437445 Note: Add a note

When Sigmund Freud first suggested that everybody has elaborate sexual fantasies, that it is as natural as breathing, he was dismissed as a pervert and lunatic. People wanted to believe that sexual fantasy was something that happened in other people—filthy people, dirty people. They took the parts of their subconscious that generated these wet dreams and daydreams and projected them onto somebody else, the depraved people Over There, who had to be stopped. Stuart Walton and the philosopher Terence McKenna both write that we are at this stage with our equally universal desire to seek out altered mental states. McKenna explains: “We are discovering35 that human beings are creatures of chemical habit with the same horrified disbelief as when the Victorians discovered that humans are creatures of sexual fantasy and obsession.”Read more at location 2938

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The fancy term for this is “the pharmaceutical theory of addiction.”Read more at location 3011

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After thinking about it deeply, Gabor came to suspect that it means, as he told me, “nothing is addictive in itself. It’s always a combination of a potentially addictive substance or behavior and a susceptible individual.Read more at location 3100

B00OZM4ANM 465222 Note: Add a note

These scientists discovered that for each traumatic event that happened to a child, they were two to four times more likely to grow up to be an addicted adult. Nearly two-thirds of injection drug use, they found, is the product of childhood trauma. This is a correlation so strong the scientists said it is “of an order of magnitude17 rarely seen in epidemiology or public health.” It means that child abuse is as likely to cause drug addiction as obesity is to cause heart disease.Read more at location 3107

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If we can figure out at the age of five which kids are going to be addicts and which ones aren’t, that tells us something fundamental about drug addiction. “Their relative maladjustment,” the study found, “precedes the initiation of drug use.” Indeed, “Problem drug use is a symptom, not a cause,20 of personal and social maladjustment.”Read more at location 3119

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“If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I’d design exactly the system that we have right now,” Gabor would tell me. “I’d attack people, and ostracize them.” He has seen that “the more you stress people, the more they’re going to use. The more you de-stress people, the less they’re going to use. So to create a system where you ostracize and marginalize and criminalize people, and force them to live in poverty with disease, you are basically guaranteeing they will stay at it.”Read more at location 3233

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Gabor says that since child neglect and abuse is a major cause of addiction, if we were serious about reducing the number of addicts, we would start “at the first prenatal visit, because already the stresses on the pregnant woman will have an impact on the potentially addictive propensity of the child.” We would identify the mothers who are most stressed and least able to cope, and we would give them extensive care and support and coaching in how to properly bond with their child.Read more at location 3241

B00OZM4ANM 486535 Note: Add a note

To the prohibitionists, Hannah is a failure, because she continued using drugs. To the Portland, she was a success, because she knew she was loved.Read more at location 3261

B00OZM4ANM 489269 Note: Add a note

Since Bruce was trained in family therapy, he figured that the best way to bring himself up to speed would be to provide counseling to addicts at a local treatment agency.Read more at location 3291

B00OZM4ANM 493765 Note: Add a note

This is so contrary to what we are told that it seems impossible, but doctors now very broadly agree it is the case. The real pain of withdrawal is the return of all the psychological pain that you were trying to put to sleep with heroin in the first place.Read more at location 3319

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These rats had been put in an empty cage. They were all alone, with no toys, and no activities, and no friends. There was nothing for them to do but to take the drug.Read more at location 3341

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So the old experiments were, it seemed, wrong. It isn’t the drug that causes the harmful behavior—it’s the environment. An isolated rat will almost always become a junkie. A rat with a good life almost never will, no matter how many drugs you make available to him. As Bruce put it: he was realizing that addiction isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you—it’s the cage you live in.Read more at location 3355

B00OZM4ANM 503519 Note: Add a note

In order to punish addicts, the drug warriors have in fact built the very conditions that will be most likely to produce and deepen addiction.Read more at location 3396

B00OZM4ANM 509447 Note: Add a note

Bruce began to look over the history of when addiction has suddenly soared among human beings—and he found it has, time and again, been when these bonds were taken away from people. The native peoples of North America were stripped of their land and their culture—and collapsed into mass alcoholism. The English poor were driven from the land into scary, scattered cities in the eighteenth century—and glugged their way into the Gin Craze.25 The American inner cities were stripped of their factory jobs and the communities surrounding them in the 1970s and 1980s—and a crack pipe was waiting at the end of the shut-down assembly line. The American rural heartlands saw their markets and subsidies wither in the 1980s and 1990s—and embarked on a meth binge.26 So Bruce came to believe, as he put it, that “today’s flood of addiction27 is occurring because our hyperindividualistic, frantic, crisis-ridden society makes most people feel social[ly] or culturally isolated. Chronic isolation causes people to look for relief. They find temporary relief in addiction . . . because [it] allows them to escape their feelings, to deaden their senses—and to experience an addictive lifestyle as a substitute for a full life.”Read more at location 3410

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Professor Peter Cohen, a friend of Bruce’s, writes that we should stop using the word “addiction” altogether and shift to a new word: “bonding.”28 Human beings need to bond. It is one of our most primal urges. So if we can’t bond with other people, we will find a behavior to bond with, whether it’s watching pornography or smoking crack or gambling. If the only bond you can find that gives you relief or meaning is with splayed women on a computer screen or bags of crystal or a roulette wheel, you will return to that bond obsessively.Read more at location 3424

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When you have been told you are a piece of shit all your life, embracing the identity of being a piece of shit, embracing the other pieces of shit, living openly as a piece of shit—it seems better than being alone.Read more at location 3455

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Almost all the funding for research into illegal drugs is provided by governments waging the drug war—and they only commission research that reinforces the ideas we already have about drugs. All these different theories, with their radical implications—why would governments want to fund those?Read more at location 3494

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There is a powerful political brake on exploring these deeper truths.Read more at location 3503

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“Human beings only become addicted when they cannot find anything better to live for and when they desperately need to fill the emptiness that threatens to destroy them,”Read more at location 3519

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The drug war began when it did because we were afraid of our own addictive impulses, rising all around us because we were so alone. So, like an evangelical preacher who rages against gays because he is afraid of his own desire to have sex with men, are we raging against addicts because we are afraid of our own growing vulnerability to addiction?Read more at location 3536

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Bruce says this dynamic is producing something even darker than the drug war. Cut off from one another, isolated, we are all becoming addicts—and our biggest addiction, as a culture, is buying and consuming stuff we don’t need and don’t even really want.Read more at location 3552

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Smoking tobacco kills 65034 out of every hundred thousand people who use it, while using cocaine kills four.Read more at location 3573

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The Office of the Surgeon General has found that just 17.7 percent of nicotine patch wearers were able to stop smoking.Read more at location 3581

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This point is worth underscoring. With the most powerful and deadly drug in our culture, the actual chemicals account for only 17.7 percent of the compulsion to use. The rest can only be explained by the factors Gabor and Bruce have discovered.Read more at location 3587

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Addiction is the psychological state of feeling you need the drug to give you the sensation of feeling calmer, or manic, or numbed, or whatever it does for you.Read more at location 3592

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There was no pleasure in winning. It was the process he craved—the moment when he was not alone with his thoughts.Read more at location 3679

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“In my family, if we didn’t count our chickens before they’d hatched, I don’t think we’d have been able to do very much counting at all.”Read more at location 3756

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“People overdose because8 [under prohibition] they don’t know if the heroin is 1 percent or 40 percent . . . Just imagine if every time you picked up a bottle of wine, you didn’t know whether it was 8 percent alcohol or 80 percent alcohol [or] if every time you took an aspirin, you didn’t know if it was 5 milligrams or 500 milligrams.”Read more at location 3765

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Bud looked it up in the library and saw that in European countries that provide9 addicts with safe rooms where they are watched over by nurses as they use their drugs, deaths from overdose had ended.Read more at location 3770

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There was a look of amazed disgust on people’s faces. They had never had a conversation with the people they were raging against.Read more at location 3786

B00OZM4ANM 567892 Note: Add a note

When a serial killer started to murder the mainly addicted sex workers of the Downtown Eastside, the police did virtually nothing for years, effectively allowing him to continue.Read more at location 3801

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overdose was the single biggest cause of death at that time in British Columbia for people between the ages of thirty and forty-nine.Read more at location 3817

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Gandhi said one of the crucial roles for anyone who wants to change anything is to make the oppression visible—to give it a physical shape.Read more at location 3819

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happened in Vancouver and nowhere else for a reason: in most cities in the world, if addicts came out in public and declared who they were and began to fight for their rights, they would risk being fired from their jobs, stripped of their welfare, and expelled from their homes. But the Portland Hotel Society—where Gabor and Liz Evans worked—had a policy of housing Vancouver’s addicts and refusing to throw them out. These addicts, alone in the world, had safe ground on which to stand.Read more at location 3828

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For the first time, they were putting prohibitionists on the defensive. They were saying: You are the people waging a war. Here are the people you are killing. What are they dying for? Tell us.Read more at location 3838

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With addicts by his side, he pledged to open the first safe injecting room in North America, to keep his new friends in VANDU alive, as the start of a wave of policies to protect addicts.Read more at location 3911

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I find that on the inside, it looks rather like a hairdresser’s. As you enter, you are taken through the lobby, shown to your booth, and given clean needles. You inject yourself, while a friendly trained nurse waits unobtrusively in the background. The booths are small and neat and lit from above. Once you have injected yourself, you can walk through to get medical treatment or counseling or just to talk about your problems. Any time you are ready to stop, there is a detox center right upstairs, with a warm bed waiting for you.Read more at location 3924

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the Globe and Mail newspaper reported,31 using figures from the British Columbia coroners’ office, that drug-related fatalities were down by 80 percent in this period. To find a rise in life expectancy this drastic, you’d have to look to the end of wars—which is what this is.Read more at location 3940

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There is one significant area in which we are worse: black men are ten times more5 likely to be imprisoned for drug offences than white men in Britain, a figure beating both the United States and apartheid South Africa.Read more at location 4000

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The British government, unsure of how to proceed, appointed a man called Sir Humphrey Rolleston,10 a baronet and president of the Royal College of Physicians, to decide what our policy should be. After taking a great deal of evidence, he became convinced that the doctors were right: “Relapse,”11 he found, “sooner or later, appears to be the rule, and permanent cure the exception.” So he insisted12 that doctors be left the leeway to prescribe heroin or not, as they saw fit. And so for two generations, Henry Smith Williams’s policies prevailed in Britain, and nowhere else on earth. The result was that while heroin addiction was swelling into the hundreds of thousands in the United States, the picture in Britain was different. The number of addicts never exceeded a thousand, and, as Mike Gray explains,13 “the addict population in England remained pretty much as it was—little old ladies, self-medicating doctors, chronic pain sufferers, ne’er-do-wells, ‘all middle-aged people’—most of them leading otherwise normal lives.” British doctors insisted there was such a thing as a “stabilized addict,”14 and they said that when you prescribe, this was the norm rather than the exception.Read more at location 4015

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Whenever Anslinger was challenged about this evidence in public, he simply denied the British system existed. His evidence was that they didn’t have it in Hong Kong,16 which he said “is a British city.” In private, however, he worked hard to shut down the British system. In 1956, the British health secretary told the House of Commons that, under pressure from the United States, he was going to have to cut off the manufacture of heroin. British doctors were outraged, explaining that “the National Health Service exists for the benefit of the sick and suffering citizen.” They would not back down, and Anslinger couldn’t crush them17 the way he did his own country’s doctors, and so the policy stayed.Read more at location 4028

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The addicts on prescriptions, by contrast, looked like the nurses, or the receptionists, or John himself. You couldn’t tell them apart.Read more at location 4070

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He knew that, like alcohol, cocaine is harmful to your health over time, but he explained: “If you were an alcoholic26 in the Chicago of the 1930s, and had just stolen your grandmother’s purse to buy a tot of adulterated methylated spirits at an exorbitant price from Mr. Capone, I would have a clean conscience in prescribing for you a dram of the best Scotch whisky.”Read more at location 4084

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you were an alcoholic26 in the Chicago of the 1930s, and had just stolen your grandmother’s purse to buy a tot of adulterated methylated spirits at an exorbitant price from Mr. Capone, I would have a clean conscience in prescribing for you a dram of the best Scotch whisky.”Read more at location 4085

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Inspector Michael Lofts studied27 142 heroin and cocaine addicts in the area, and he found that in the eighteen months before getting a prescription from Dr. Marks, they received, on average, 6.88 criminal convictions, mostly for theft and robbery. In the eighteen months afterward, that figure fell to an average of 0.44 criminal convictions. In other words: there was a 93 percent drop28 in theft and burglary.Read more at location 4088

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Will Self,Read more at location 4110

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“Heroin use was concentrated35 in the 25 to 39 group, after which it tapered to very little,” he wrote. Most addicts simply stopped of their own accord. They “mature out of addiction . . . possibly because the stresses and strains of life are becoming stabilized for them and because the major challenges of adulthood have passed.”Read more at location 4120

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Most addicts will simply stop,37 whether they are given treatment or not, provided prohibition doesn’t kill them first. They usually do so after around ten years of use.Read more at location 4125

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Prescription, it turns out, kills the pyramid selling scheme, by stripping out the profit motive. You don’t have to sell smack to get smack. This explains why when you prescribe heroin, fewer people are recruited to use heroin, and why when you prescribe cocaine, fewer people are recruited to use cocaine.Read more at location 4152

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There was a drop in shoplifting so massive that the department store chain Marks and Spencer’s46 publicly praised the policy and decided to sponsor the first World Conference on Harm Reduction and Drug-Taking in Liverpool in 1990.Read more at location 4171

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The results came quickly. In all the time Dr. Marks had been prescribing, from 1982 to 1995,51 he never had a drug-related death among his patients. Now Sydney, the Liverpool docker, went back to buying adulterated crap on the streets and died. Julia Scott, who said she would be dead without her prescription, was proved right: she died of an overdose, leaving her daughter without a mother.Read more at location 4191

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Ruth was told that as a woman, she was hysterical and emotional and couldn’t be entrusted with the vote. If they ever let her cast a ballot, the country’s politicians warned, Switzerland’s families would fall apart and the nation would descend into chaos. It was only after she and thousands of others marched and demanded for years that Swiss women were finally enfranchised in 1971. So Ruth Dreifuss had seen how even the most concrete of certainties can fall apart and seem crazy to the next generation.Read more at location 4243

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The Swiss go to bed early, and they wake in the darkness without complaining.Read more at location 4269

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“once you have stability, the speed of events decreases, and you come back into a normal life, and you say—okay, what am I going to do now?”Read more at location 4291

B00OZM4ANM 643772 Note: Add a note

If you are an addict here and you want a higher dose of heroin, you can ask for it, and they’ll give it to you. So at first, most addicts demand more and more, just as Anslinger and his agents predicted. But within a few months, most addicts stop asking for more and choose, of their own free will, to stabilize their doses.64 After that, “most of them want to go always down,” explains the psychiatrist here, Dr. Rita Manghi. Jean, for example, started at the clinic taking heroin three times a day—80 mg in the morning, 60 mg in the afternoon, and 80 mg in the evening. Now, he takes only 30 mg in the morning and 40 mg in the evening, and he says, “I’m on the brink of saying to my doctor I don’t want any more.” He is a typical user here. Suddenly, the slightly depressing debate at the start of the drug war between Harry Anslinger and Henry Smith Williams—prohibition forever versus prescription forever—seems bogus. But in this clinic, they have discovered that that isn’t the real choice. If you give hard-core addicts the option of a safe legal prescription and allow them to control the dose, the vast majority will stabilize and then slowly reduce their drug consumption over time. Prescription isn’t an alternative to stopping your drug use. It is—for many people—a path to it.Read more at location 4304

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Most addicts here, he says, come with an empty glass inside them;66 when they take heroin, the glass becomes full, but only for a few hours, and then it drains down to nothing again. The purpose of this program is to gradually build a life for the addict so they can put something else into that empty glass: a social network, a job, some daily pleasures. If you can do that, it will mean that even as the heroin drains, you are not left totally empty. Over time, as your life has more in it, the glass will contain more and more, so it will take less and less heroin to fill it up. And in the end, there may be enough within you that you feel full without any heroin at all.Read more at location 4316

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After the clinics opened, the people of Switzerland started to notice something. The parks and railway stations that were filled with addicts emptied. Today, children play there once again. The streets became safer. The people on heroin prescriptions carry out 55 percent fewer vehicle thefts and 80 percent68 fewer muggings and burglaries. This fall in crime was “almost immediate,”69 the most detailed academic study found. The HIV epidemic among drug users stopped. In 1985, some 68 percent of new HIV infections in Switzerland were caused by injection drug use, but by 2009, it was down to approximately 5 percent.70 The number of addicts dying every year fell dramatically,71 the proportion with permanent jobs tripled, and every single one had a home.72 A third of all73 addicts who had been on welfare came off it altogether. And just as in Liverpool, the pyramid selling by addicts crumbled to sand: people on the heroin prescription program for a sustained period were 94.7 percent74 less likely to sell drugs than before their treatment. Jean tells me the drug dealers he used to work for are “completely against this program. They can control people in weak states and make money from them.Read more at location 4325

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Before the ban, almost all opiate users would buy a mild form of the drug at their corner store for a small price. A few did become addicts, and that meant their lives were depleted, in the same way that an alcoholic’s life is depleted today. Nobody should dismiss this effect: it is real human suffering. But virtually none of them committed crimes to get their drug, or became wildly out of control, or lost their jobs. Then the legal routes to the drug were cut off—and all the problems we associate with drug addiction began: criminality, prostitution, violence.Read more at location 4427

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Outbreaks of drug addiction have always taken place, he proved, when there was a sudden rise is isolation and distress—from the gin-soaked slums of London in the eighteenth century to the terrified troops in Vietnam.Read more at location 4464

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But whichever way you cut it, 17 percent is still a small part of the effect. Focusing only on this smaller aspect and ignoring the much larger causes is one of the reasons why our responses to this crisis are failing so badly.Read more at location 4479

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The day before alcohol prohibition91 was introduced, the most popular drink in the United States was beer, but as soon as alcohol was banned, hard liquor soared from 40 percent of all drinks that were sold to 90 percent.Read more at location 4496

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Here’s how you can see it for yourself, as I promised before, at a college football game in the United States. As Gray explains: “Students are normally beer drinkers, but since alcohol is prohibited at the stadium, they sneak in a flask and become whisky drinkers.” The stadium is a zone of alcohol prohibition—and92 the college kids end up drinking a much stronger kind of alcohol than they’d prefer, because it’s better than nothing.Read more at location 4510

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Before drugs were criminalized, the most popular way to consume opiates was through very mild opiate teas, syrups, and wines. The bestselling Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup,93 for example, contained 0.16 grain of morphine. One wine laced with cocaine—Vin Mariani—was94 publicly recommended by Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII. The most popular way to consume coca was in teas and soft drinks.95 But within a few years of the introduction of prohibition, these milder forms of the drug had vanished. They were too bulky to smuggle: even though there was more demand for them, they weren’t worth the risk for dealers like Arnold Rothstein. That’s when coca tea was replaced by powder cocaine, and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was replaced by injectable heroin. The harder you crack down, the stronger the drugs become. The crackdown on cannabis in the 1970s triggered the rise of skunk and superskunk. The crackdown on powder cocaine in the early 1980s led to the creation of crack, a more compact form of the drug. Many drug users want and prefer the milder forms of their drug—but they can’t get them under prohibition, so they are pressed onto harder drugs.Read more at location 4514

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He had “just a vague [sense] that we had political police [and] that some people were missing. There was no discussion of it. It was a taboo.”Read more at location 4577

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They had free rein to think this problem through, starting from scratch. This meant they could acknowledge some fairly obvious facts that had long been ignored in most countries. The first was that the overwhelming majority of adult drug users had no problem: they used for pleasure and did not become addicts. The authorities, they decided, need not concern themselves with these people, except to offer safety advice. The second point was that when it came to addicts, the country had already tried, João says, the “terroristic” approach pioneered by Anslinger: threaten drug addicts and impose severe pain on them if they continue. In his experience at his clinic, this was “the best way to make them wish to keep using drugs. To deal with it by chaining, by humiliating—it’s the best way to make them angry with the system, to not to wish to be normal.”Read more at location 4634

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So when the panel reported, it made recommendations based on these insights. It said that “drug users should be treated9 as full members of society instead of cast out as criminals or other pariahs.” Instead of “striv[ing] toward an unachievable perfection such as zero drug use,” they would decriminalize all drugs. Choosing to put a chemical into your body should not be a crime, and being addicted should not be a crime. Instead, all the money spent on arresting, trying, and punishing addicts should be transferred to educating kids and helping addicts to recover.Read more at location 4648

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The new law stipulated that recreational drug users “should, above all,11 not be labeled or marginalized,” and addicts should be approached by the state exclusively “to encourage him or her to seek treatment.”Read more at location 4659

B00OZM4ANM 699082 Note: Add a note

In the United States, 90 percent of the money spent on drug policy goes to policing and punishment, with 10 percent going to treatment and prevention. In Portugal, the ratio13 is the exact opposite.Read more at location 4673

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The police don’t go looking for drug users anymore, but if they stumble across you, they will write you a ticket that requires you to come here the next day. The job of the Dissuasion Commission16 is only to figure out whether you have a drug problem. You can be honest with them, because nothing you say or do here will ever get you a criminal record.Read more at location 4686

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These massages help them to cope with the withdrawal pains, one of the nurses tells me, but it has a more important function. It helps them learn how to calm down without a chemical cocktail, often for the first time.Read more at location 4721

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“using drugs is only a symptom of some suffering, and we have to reach the reasons” that make addicts want to be out of their heads much of the time.Read more at location 4723

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“you don’t feel high but you remain with no suffering for the lack of heroin . . . So you are completely available to work, to study, or whatever. Even to drive a truck—we have several truck drivers on methadone.”Read more at location 4766

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A good day at work for him, he said, was when he could persuade one of the addicts he worked with to move from injecting heroin to smoking heroin.Read more at location 4772

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They were five years old when all drugs were decriminalized, so they have never known the drug war.Read more at location 4830

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but we were alone, with only our own ignorance to reflect back at each other.Read more at location 4841

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The school bell rings and the kids shuffle out of the classroom. They have, I realize, had honest conversations with adults, in place of the boo-and-hiss pantomime my generation was offered.Read more at location 4854

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In the United States alone, legalizing drugs would save $41 billion a year currently spent on arresting, trying, and jailing users and sellers, according to a detailed study by the Cato Institute.31 If the drugs were then taxed at a similar rate to alcohol and tobacco, they would raise an additional $46.7 billion32 a year, according to calculations by Professor Jeffrey Miron of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. That’s $87.8 billion next year, and every year. For that money, you could provide the Portuguese style of treatment and social reconnection for every drug addict in America.Read more at location 4948

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He believes in giving out lots of hugs.Read more at location 4988

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He announced that he would not be moving into the Presidential Palace. He would be staying right here, in his shack, for his full five-year term. He would be giving 90 percent11 of his income to the poor and living on $775 a month. And as for the presidential limousine—no, thanks. He would take the bus.Read more at location 5066

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At the moment, we have a licensed and regulated way to sell the two deadliest recreational drugs on earth—alcohol and tobacco.Read more at location 5123

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At its heart, legalization is, Danny tells me, “a drama reduction program. Because all the excitement, the salaciousness, the sexiness of drugs is very much in their prohibition, not their regulation. Somebody once said to me—what you really need to do is get a movie made of what legalization would look like. And I said—Jesus, that would be the most boring film in the world. Because it would be. It’s going to be watching somebody walk into a shop and say, ‘Please can I have some MDMA?’ and they will say, ‘Yes, here’s some. That’ll be £4.50 please.’Read more at location 5154

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What seems to happen when you legalize marijuana is that a significant number of people looking to chill out transfer from getting drunk32 to getting stoned. After California made it much easier to get marijuana from your doctor—anyone claiming a bad back was given a permit—traffic accidents fell by 8 percent,33 because lots of people made this shift, and driving when you’re stoned (while a bad idea) is nowhere near as dangerous as driving drunk.Read more at location 5195

B00OZM4ANM 779853 Note: Add a note

That’s why Danny believes that talk about a rise in “drug use” is the wrong way of thinking about it. The more interesting question, he says, is how patterns of drug use will change.Read more at location 5200

B00OZM4ANM 780090 Note: Add a note

Legalization slightly increases drug use—but it significantly reduces drug harms.Read more at location 5224

B00OZM4ANM 783588 Note: Add a note

More people used drugs, yet addiction fell substantially. Why? Because punishment—shaming a person, caging them, making them unemployable—traps them in addiction. Taking that money and spending it instead on helping them to get jobs and homes and decent lives makes it possible for many of them to stop.Read more at location 5253

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the places that have expanded legal access to hard drugs have seen an enormous fall in overdoses. Why? There are two big reasons. The first is that at the moment, if you buy a drug from a gangster, you have no idea what is in it. Imagine ordering generic “alcohol” from the bar, not knowing whether it is an alcopop or absinthe. You’d be far more likely to drink too much and collapse. In a regulated store, by contrast, you know what you are getting. The second reason is the iron law of prohibition, which I explained earlier. When you ban a drug, it’s very risky to transport it—so dealers will always choose the drug that packs the strongest possible kick into the smallest possible space. That means that under prohibition you can only get the most hard-core form of a drug. Beer disappeared during alcohol prohibition, and moonshine shone; as soon as alcohol prohibition ended, moonshine vanished.Read more at location 5260

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He showed me that the evidence is that, of the people who have tried crack, just 3 percent have used40 it in the past month, and at most 20 percent were ever addicted at any point in their lives.Read more at location 5303

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Mujica “would be different if he weren’t kept prisoner,” Lucia tells me, “because he had so much time to think, it became clear to him what was important in life.” He learned “to live with light baggage in jail. He learned that happiness doesn’t come from what you have, but from what you are.”Read more at location 5370

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“If I have too much luggage, too much property, too many material goods, that makes me worry I have to defend this stuff—then in that case I will not have time left to take care of the things I really love, and then I lose my freedom.”Read more at location 5372

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More controversially, Mason had noticed academic research that shows men are eight times more likely17 to attack their partners after drinking, but no more likely to do it after smoking cannabis. That’s why SAFER paid to put up a billboard showing a woman who had been beaten up, and urging people to vote for marijuana legalization to reduce domestic violence.Read more at location 5476

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But when he heard people during the campaign saying the drug is “safe,” he felt obliged to explain: “This is perhaps what you’d like to believe, but the science doesn’t support it. Dependence is a risk. Driving accidents are a risk. Teenagers using marijuana early and regularly and becoming derailed . . . is a risk, and to say marijuana is harmless is misinformed, and it’s misinforming those people you’re talking to.”Read more at location 5521

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“Once people started to realize they knew homosexuals who were in wonderful, loving relationships—once the humanization of it happened—people got to accept it a little more in their lives,” she says. “That’s how it was with me and drugs and drug use. I know a lot of incredibly smart, articulate, productive members of society that recreationally use marijuana . . . For me it was just realizing that my ideas of what I thought people were like who used drugs were totally incorrect—and allowing those beliefs to be shattered when facts presented themselves.”Read more at location 5579

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“You cannot vilify marijuana the way Harry Anslinger did” today, he tells me, “because we have this vast experience with marijuana, so if you tell people [that] if you smoke marijuana you’re going to go out and kill your parents—nobody is going to believe that. But if you [said that] in Harry Anslinger’s time, people did believe [it].” Today, if “you tell people [that] if they do methamphetamine they’ll kill someone, people will believe that. Or if you tell people [that] if they smoke crack they’ll go and kill someone, people will believe that—although it’s just not possible.” So until we debunk this “mythical view of drugs,” he says, we will be stuck forever in Anslinger’s war.Read more at location 5636

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With legalization, the fevered poetry of the drug war has turned into the flat prose of the drug peace. Drugs have been turned into a topic as banal as selling fish, or tires, or lightbulbs.Read more at location 5683

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The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.Read more at location 5742

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For a hundred years we have been singing war songs about addicts. All along, we should have been singing love songs to them.Read more at location 5744

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Another reason construction has been neglected by researchers and writers is the mistaken idea that, compared to other software-development activities, construction is a relatively mechanical process that presents little opportunity for improvement. Nothing could be further from the truth.Read more at location 451

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The irony of the shift in focus away from construction is that construction is the only activity that's guaranteed to be done. Requirements can be assumed rather than developed; architecture can be shortchanged rather than designed; and testing can be abbreviated or skipped rather than fully planned and executed. But if there's going to be a program, there has to be construction, and that makes construction a uniquely fruitful area in which to improve development practices.Read more at location 462

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When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. — Pablo PicassoRead more at location 477

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Read it if you want to think about software development more clearly.Read more at location 649

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once the old theory has been discarded, it seems incredible that anyone ever believed it at all.Read more at location 687

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It's tempting to trivialize the power of metaphors. To each of the earlier examples, the natural response is to say, "Well, of course the right metaphor is more useful. The other metaphor was wrong!" Though that's a natural reaction, it's simplistic. The history of science isn't a series of switches from the "wrong" metaphor to the "right" one. It's a series of changes from "worse" metaphors to "better" ones, from less inclusive to more inclusive, from suggestive in one area to suggestive in another.Read more at location 691

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Over time, though, the person who uses metaphors to illuminate the software-development process will be perceived as someone who has a better understanding of programming and produces better code faster than people who don't use them.Read more at location 724

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As much as 90 percent of the development effort on a typical software system comes after its initial release, with two-thirds being typicalRead more at location 744

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In short, the writing metaphor implies a software-development process that's too simple and rigid to be healthy.Read more at location 746

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some software developers say you should envision creating software as something like planting seeds and growing crops. You design a piece, code a piece, test a piece, and add it to the system a little bit at a time. By taking small steps, you minimize the trouble you can get into at any one time.Read more at location 763

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Building a four-foot tower requires a steady hand, a level surface, and 10 undamaged beer cans. Building a tower 100 times that size doesn't merely require 100 times as many beer cans. It requires a different kind of planning and construction altogether.Read more at location 810

B00JDMPOSY 121702 Note: Add a note

Doing the most expensive part of the project twice is as bad an idea in software as it is in any other line of work.Read more at location 925

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industry data from the 1970s to the present day indicates that projects will run best if appropriate preparation activities are done before construction begins in earnest.Read more at location 953

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managers are notoriously unsympathetic to programmers who spend time on construction prerequisites.Read more at location 979

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First, you can flatly refuse to do work in an ineffective order. If your relationships with your boss and your bank account are healthy enough for you to be able to do this, good luck.Read more at location 993

B00JDMPOSY 149007 Note: Add a note

pretending to be coding when you're not. Put an old program listing on the corner of your desk. Then go right ahead and develop your requirements and architecture, with or without your boss's approval. You'll do the project faster and with higher-quality results. Some people find this approach ethically objectionable, but from your boss's perspective, ignorance will be bliss.Read more at location 994

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1. The cost to fix a defect rises dramatically as the time from when it's introduced to when it's detected increases.Read more at location 1077

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The problem definition should be in user language, and the problem should be described from a user's point of view.Read more at location 1292

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The penalty for failing to define the problem is that you can waste a lot of time solving the wrong problem. This is a double-barreled penalty because you also don't solve the right problem.Read more at location 1303

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Explicit requirements help to ensure that the user rather than the programmer drives the system's functionality.Read more at location 1310

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Explicit requirements also help to avoid arguments. You decide on the scope of the system before you begin programming. If you have a disagreement with another programmer about what the program is supposed to do, you can resolve it by looking at the written requirements.Read more at location 1313

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Requirements are like water. They're easier to build on when they're frozen.Read more at location 1339

B00JDMPOSY 200812 Note: Add a note

Programmers who remember to consider the business impact of their decisions are worth their weight in gold—althoughRead more at location 1391

B00JDMPOSY 208612 Note: Add a note

If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself. — Albert EinsteinRead more at location 1467

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In the architecture, you should find evidence that alternatives to the final organization were considered and find the reasons for choosing the final organization over its alternatives.Read more at location 1469

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One review of design practices found that the design rationale is at least as important for maintenance as the design itselfRead more at location 1472

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What each building block is responsible for should be well defined. A building block should have one area of responsibility, and it should know as little as possible about other building blocks' areas of responsibility. By minimizing what each building block knows about the other building blocks, you localize information about the design into single building blocks.Read more at location 1480

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A building block should have one area of responsibility, and it should know as little as possible about other building blocks' areas of responsibility. By minimizing what each building block knows about the other building blocks, you localize information about the design into single building blocks.Read more at location 1481

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The architecture should describe other class designs that were considered and give reasons for preferring the organization that was chosen.Read more at location 1494

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The architecture should be modularized so that a new user interface can be substituted without affecting the business rules and output parts of the program.Read more at location 1518

B00JDMPOSY 227746 Note: Add a note

What is the level of responsibility of each class for validating its input data? Is each class responsible for validating its own data, or is there a group of classes responsible for validating the system's data? Can classes at any level assume that the data they're receiving is clean?Read more at location 1587

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Specifying an approach to overengineering is particularly important because many programmers overengineer their classes automatically, out of a sense of professional pride.Read more at location 1617

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If the architecture isn't using off-the-shelf components, it should explain the ways in which it expects custom-built components to surpass ready-made libraries and components.Read more at location 1628

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Consequently, one of the major challenges facing a software architect is making the architecture flexible enough to accommodate likely changes.Read more at location 1637

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The central thesis of the most popular software-engineering book ever, The Mythical Man-Month, is that the essential problem with large systems is maintaining their conceptual integrityRead more at location 1659

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The architecture should describe the motivations for all major decisions. Be wary of "we've always done it that way" justifications.Read more at location 1667

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Be wary of "we've always done it that way" justifications.Read more at location 1667

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Good software architecture is largely machine- and language-independent.Read more at location 1672

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Finally, you shouldn't be uneasy about any parts of the architecture. It shouldn't contain anything just to please the boss. It shouldn't contain anything that's hard for you to understand. You're the one who'll implement it; if it doesn't make sense to you, how can you implement it?Read more at location 1681

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If a good problem definition hasn't been specified, you might be solving the wrong problem during construction.Read more at location 1814

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By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race. Before the introduction of the Arabic notation, multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called into play the highest mathematical faculties. Probably nothing in the modern world would have more astonished a Greek mathematician than to learn that … a huge proportion of the population of Western Europe could perform the operation of division for the largest numbers. This fact would have seemed to him a sheer impossibility…. Our modern power of easy reckoning with decimal fractions is the almost miraculous result of the gradual discovery of a perfect notation. —Alfred North WhiteheadRead more at location 1841

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The programming language in which the system will be implemented should be of great interest to you since you will be immersed in it from the beginning of construction to the end.Read more at location 1847

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Programmers working with high-level languages achieve better productivity and quality than those working with lower-level languages.Read more at location 1855

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You save time when you don't need to have an awards ceremony every time a C statement does what it's supposed to.Read more at location 1857

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In the case of natural languages, the linguists Sapir and Whorf hypothesize a relationship between the expressive power of a language and the ability to think certain thoughts. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that your ability to think a thought depends on knowing words capable of expressing the thought. If you don't know the words, you can't express the thought and you might not even be able to formulate it (Whorf 1956).Read more at location 1879

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Programmers may be similarly influenced by their languages. The words available in a programming language for expressing your programming thoughts certainly determine how you express your thoughts and might even determine what thoughts you can express.Read more at location 1882

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One key to successful programming is avoiding arbitrary variations so that your brain can be free to focus on the variations that are really needed.Read more at location 1958

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Programmers who program "into" a language first decide what thoughts they want to express, and then they determine how to express those thoughts using the tools provided by their specific language.Read more at location 1994

B00JDMPOSY 299262 Note: Add a note

Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber defined a "wicked" problem as one that could be clearly defined only by solving it, or by solving part of it (1973).Read more at location 2095

B00JDMPOSY 314328 Note: Add a note

One of the main differences between programs you develop in school and those you develop as a professional is that the design problems solved by school programs are rarely, if ever, wicked. Programming assignments in school are devised to move you in a beeline from beginning to end. You'd probably want to tar and feather a teacher who gave you a programming assignment, then changed the assignment as soon as you finished the design, and then changed it again just as you were about to turn in the completed program. But that very process is an everyday reality in professional programming.Read more at location 2111

B00JDMPOSY 317140 Note: Add a note

when projects do fail for reasons that are primarily technical, the reason is often uncontrolled complexity. The software is allowed to grow so complex that no one really knows what it does. When a project reaches the point at which no one completely understands the impact that code changes in one area will have on other areas, progress grinds to a halt.Read more at location 2190

B00JDMPOSY 328810 Note: Add a note

Managing complexity is the most important technical topic in software development. In my view, it's so important that Software's Primary Technical Imperative has to be managing complexity.Read more at location 2197

B00JDMPOSY 329636 Note: Add a note

Computing pioneer Edsger Dijkstra pointed out that computing is the only profession in which a single mind is obliged to span the distance from a bit to a few hundred megabytes, a ratio of 1 to 109, or nine orders of magnitude (Dijkstra 1989). This gigantic ratio is staggering. Dijkstra put it this way: "Compared to that number of semantic levels, the average mathematical theory is almost flat. By evoking the need for deep conceptual hierarchies, the automatic computer confronts us with a radically new intellectual challenge that has no precedent in our history." Of course software has become even more complex since 1989, and Dijkstra's ratio of 1 to 109could easily be more like 1 to 1015 today.Read more at location 2199

B00JDMPOSY 330517 Note: Add a note

Dijkstra pointed out that no one's skull is really big enough to contain a modern computer program (Dijkstra 1972), which means that we as software developers shouldn't try to cram whole programs into our skulls at once; we should try to organize our programs in such a way that we can safely focus on one part of it at a time. The goal is to minimize the amount of a program you have to think about at any one time.Read more at location 2204

B00JDMPOSY 330959 Note: Add a note

Keeping routines short helps reduce your mental workload. Writing programs in terms of the problem domain, rather than in terms of low-level implementation details, and working at the highest level of abstraction reduce the load on your brain.Read more at location 2216

B00JDMPOSY 332545 Note: Add a note

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. — R. Buckminster FullerRead more at location 2233

B00JDMPOSY 335194 Note: Add a note

Avoid making "clever" designs. Clever designs are usually hard to understand. Instead make "simple" and "easy-to-understand" designs.Read more at location 2240

B00JDMPOSY 336057 Note: Add a note

Voltaire said that a book is finished not when nothing more can be added but when nothing more can be taken away.Read more at location 2258

B00JDMPOSY 338721 Note: Add a note

Design the system so that you can view it at one level without dipping into other levels.Read more at location 2262

B00JDMPOSY 339332 Note: Add a note

Make each subsystem meaningful by restricting communications.Read more at location 2296

B00JDMPOSY 344421 Note: Add a note

You want to architect your system so that if you pull out a subsystem to use elsewhere, you won't have many hoses to reconnect and those hoses will reconnect easily.Read more at location 2311

B00JDMPOSY 346775 Note: Add a note

The simplest relationship is to have one subsystem call routines in another. A more involved relationship is to have one subsystem contain classes from another. The most involved relationship is to have classes in one subsystem inherit from classes in another.Read more at location 2320

B00JDMPOSY 348183 Note: Add a note

This desire for deterministic behavior is highly appropriate to detailed computer programming, where that kind of strict attention to detail makes or breaks a program. But software design is a much different story.Read more at location 2386

B00JDMPOSY 358045 Note: Add a note

Because design is nondeterministic, skillful application of an effective set of heuristics is the core activity in good software design.Read more at location 2388

B00JDMPOSY 358199 Note: Add a note

Ask not first what the system does; ask WHAT it does it to! — Bertrand MeyerRead more at location 2394

B00JDMPOSY 359189 Note: Add a note

Further examination of the problem domain might produce better choices for software objects than a one-to-one mapping to real-world objects, but the real-world objects are a good place to start.Read more at location 2412

B00JDMPOSY 361987 Note: Add a note

The two generic things objects can do to each other are containment and inheritance.Read more at location 2418

B00JDMPOSY 362686 Note: Add a note

Abstraction is the ability to engage with a concept while safely ignoring some of its details—handling different details at different levels.Read more at location 2435

B00JDMPOSY 365291 Note: Add a note

From a complexity point of view, the principal benefit of abstraction is that it allows you to ignore irrelevant details.Read more at location 2442

B00JDMPOSY 366273 Note: Add a note

Encapsulation picks up where abstraction leaves off. Abstraction says, "You're allowed to look at an object at a high level of detail." Encapsulation says, "Furthermore, you aren't allowed to look at an object at any other level of detail."Read more at location 2458

B00JDMPOSY 368916 Note: Add a note

the road to programming hell is paved with global variables,Read more at location 2578

B00JDMPOSY 386674 Note: Add a note

If you keep both information hiding and performance in mind, you can achieve both objectives.Read more at location 2588

B00JDMPOSY 388154 Note: Add a note

Until you can measure the system's performance and pinpoint the bottlenecks, the best way to prepare for code-level performance work is to create a highly modular design.Read more at location 2593

B00JDMPOSY 388977 Note: Add a note

In software, make the connections among modules as simple as possible.Read more at location 2695

B00JDMPOSY 404277 Note: Add a note

Programming is not like being in the CIA; you don't get credit for being sneaky. It's more like advertising; you get lots of credit for making your connections as blatant as possible.Read more at location 2706

B00JDMPOSY 406039 Note: Add a note

Semantic coupling is dangerous because changing code in the used module can break code in the using module in ways that are completely undetectable by the compiler.Read more at location 2759

B00JDMPOSY 413918 Note: Add a note

Cohesion is a useful tool for managing complexity because the more that code in a class supports a central purpose, the more easily your brain can remember everything the code does.Read more at location 2841

B00JDMPOSY 426240 Note: Add a note

Some people are uncomfortable if they don't come to closure after a design cycle, but after you have created a few designs without resolving issues prematurely, it will seem natural to leave issues unresolved until you have more informationRead more at location 2936

B00JDMPOSY 440572 Note: Add a note

How far do you decompose a program? Continue decomposing until it seems as if it would be easier to code the next level than to decompose it. Work until you become somewhat impatient at how obvious and easy the design seems. At that point, you're done. If it's not clear, work some more. If the solution is even slightly tricky for you now, it'll be a bear for anyone who works on it later.Read more at location 2982

B00JDMPOSY 447558 Note: Add a note

I rarely encounter projects that are suffering from having done too much design work.Read more at location 3103

B00JDMPOSY 465502 Note: Add a note

Treat yourself to the highest possible level of abstraction.Read more at location 3430

B00JDMPOSY 514428 Note: Add a note

Try to make the names of classes and access routines independent of how the data is stored, and refer to the abstract data type, like the insurance-rates table, instead.Read more at location 3448

B00JDMPOSY 517285 Note: Add a note

The class interface doesn't present a consistent abstraction, so the class has poor cohesion.Read more at location 3523

B00JDMPOSY 528451 Note: Add a note

Each class should implement one and only one ADT.Read more at location 3538

B00JDMPOSY 530668 Note: Add a note

That argument fails the main test for inheritance, which is, "Is inheritance used only for "is a" relationships?"Read more at location 3566

B00JDMPOSY 534970 Note: Add a note

When you design a class, check each public routine to determine whether you need its complement. Don't create an opposite gratuitously, but do check to see whether you need one.Read more at location 3591

B00JDMPOSY 538785 Note: Add a note

Any aspect of an interface that can't be enforced by the compiler is an aspect that's likely to be misused.Read more at location 3601

B00JDMPOSY 540232 Note: Add a note

The two concepts are related because, without encapsulation, abstraction tends to break down. In my experience, either you have both abstraction and encapsulation or you have neither. There is no middle ground.Read more at location 3636

B00JDMPOSY 545496 Note: Add a note

Favor read-time convenience to write-time convenience. CodeRead more at location 3695

B00JDMPOSY 554229 Note: Add a note

Be critical of classes that contain more than about seven data members. TheRead more at location 3757

B00JDMPOSY 563575 Note: Add a note

"Subclasses must be usable through the base class interface without the need for the user to know the difference"Read more at location 3784

B00JDMPOSY 567639 Note: Add a note

If you want to use a class's implementation but not its interface, use containment rather than inheritance.Read more at location 3819

B00JDMPOSY 572817 Note: Add a note

Move common interfaces, data, and behavior as high as possible in the inheritance tree. TheRead more at location 3825

B00JDMPOSY 573705 Note: Add a note

Be suspicious of classes of which there is only one instance. ARead more at location 3828

B00JDMPOSY 574148 Note: Add a note

Prefer polymorphism to extensive type checking. FrequentlyRead more at location 3859

B00JDMPOSY 578806 Note: Add a note

Mixins are nearly always abstract and aren't meant to be instantiated independently of other objects.Read more at location 3892

B00JDMPOSY 583894 Note: Add a note

The motivation for creating shallow copies is typically to improve performance. Although creating multiple copies of large objects might be aesthetically offensive, it rarely causes any measurable performance impact. A small number of objects might cause performance issues, but programmers are notoriously poor at guessing which code really causes problems. (For details, see Chapter 25.) Because it's a poor tradeoff to add complexity for dubious performance gains, a good approach to deep vs. shallow copies is to prefer deep copies until proven otherwise.Read more at location 3969

B00JDMPOSY 596002 Note: Add a note

Aside from the computer itself, the routine is the single greatest invention in computer science.Read more at location 4230

B00JDMPOSY 634473 Note: Add a note

The class is also a good contender for the single greatest invention in computer science.Read more at location 4233

B00JDMPOSY 634968 Note: Add a note

The name introduces a higher level of abstraction than the original eight lines of code, which makes the code more readable and easier to understand, and it reduces complexity within the routine that originally contained the code.Read more at location 4260

B00JDMPOSY 639124 Note: Add a note

The goal is to have each routine do one thing well and not do anything else.Read more at location 4339

B00JDMPOSY 650864 Note: Add a note

Instead of having a routine that does one of three distinct operations, depending on a flag passed to it, it's cleaner to have three routines, each of which does one distinct operation.Read more at location 4396

B00JDMPOSY 659584 Note: Add a note

focus your attention on functional cohesion for maximum benefit.Read more at location 4412

B00JDMPOSY 661818 Note: Add a note

Describe everything the routine does. In the routine's name, describe all the outputs and side effects. If a routine computes report totals and opens an output file, ComputeReportTotals() is not an adequate name for the routine. ComputeReportTotalsAndOpen-OutputFile() is an adequate name but is too long and silly. If you have routines with side effects, you'll have many long, silly names. The cure is not to use less-descriptive routine names; the cure is to program so that you cause things to happen directly rather than with side effects.Read more at location 4417

B00JDMPOSY 663108 Note: Add a note

Make names of routines as long as necessary. ResearchRead more at location 4439

B00JDMPOSY 665770 Note: Add a note

A function returns a value, and the function should be named for the value it returns.Read more at location 4444

B00JDMPOSY 666565 Note: Add a note

Decades of evidence say that routines of such length are no more error prone than shorter routines. Let issues such as the routine's cohesion, depth of nesting, number of variables, number of decision points, number of comments needed to explain the routine, and other complexity-related considerations dictate the length of the routine rather than imposing a length restriction per se.Read more at location 4516

B00JDMPOSY 677765 Note: Add a note

Put parameters in input-modify-output order. InsteadRead more at location 4526

B00JDMPOSY 678803 Note: Add a note

Put status or error variables last. ByRead more at location 4574

B00JDMPOSY 686063 Note: Add a note

Don't use routine parameters as working variables. It'sRead more at location 4576

B00JDMPOSY 686435 Note: Add a note

Even better than commenting your assumptions, use assertions to put them into code.Read more at location 4610

B00JDMPOSY 691494 Note: Add a note

Limit the number of a routine's parameters to about seven. SevenRead more at location 4618

B00JDMPOSY 692692 Note: Add a note

If you find yourself consistently passing more than a few arguments, the coupling among your routines is too tight. Design the routine or group of routines to reduce the coupling. If you are passing the same data to many different routines, group the routines into a class and treat the frequently used data as class data.Read more at location 4624

B00JDMPOSY 693818 Note: Add a note

(In general, code that "sets up" for a call to a routine or "takes down" after a call to a routine is an indication that the routine is not well designed.)Read more at location 4649

B00JDMPOSY 697461 Note: Add a note

A function is a routine that returns a value; a procedure is a routine that does not.Read more at location 4677

B00JDMPOSY 701573 Note: Add a note

To combine the call and the test into one line of code increases the density of the statement and, correspondingly, its complexity.Read more at location 4699

B00JDMPOSY 704846 Note: Add a note

The practice of using macros as substitutes for function calls is generally considered risky and hard to understand—bad programming practice—soRead more at location 4747

B00JDMPOSY 712094 Note: Add a note

As Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of C++ points out, "Almost every macro demonstrates a flaw in the programming language, in the program, or in the programmer…. When you use macros, you should expect inferior service from tools such as debuggers, cross-reference tools, and profilers"Read more at location 4762

B00JDMPOSY 714542 Note: Add a note

Error handling typically checks for bad input data; assertions check for bugs in the code.Read more at location 4906

B00JDMPOSY 735873 Note: Add a note

Put executable statements on their own lines, assign the results to status variables, and test the status variables instead.Read more at location 4920

B00JDMPOSY 737986 Note: Add a note

Developers tend to use these terms informally, but, strictly speaking, these terms are at opposite ends of the scale from each other. Correctness means never returning an inaccurate result; returning no result is better than returning an inaccurate result. Robustness means always trying to do something that will allow the software to keep operating, even if that leads to results that are inaccurate sometimes.Read more at location 5040

B00JDMPOSY 756426 Note: Add a note

Exceptions weaken encapsulation by requiring the code that calls a routine to know which exceptions might be thrown inside the code that's called.Read more at location 5110

B00JDMPOSY 766511 Note: Add a note

Include in the exception message all information that led to the exception. EveryRead more at location 5148

B00JDMPOSY 772127 Note: Add a note

Carrying data of questionable type for any length of time in a program increases complexity and increases the chance that someone can crash your programRead more at location 5234

B00JDMPOSY 785125 Note: Add a note

The use of barricades makes the distinction between assertions and error handling clean-cut. Routines that are outside the barricade should use error handling because it isn't safe to make any assumptions about the data. Routines inside the barricade should use assertions, because the data passed to them is supposed to be sanitized before it's passed across the barricade. If one of the routines inside the barricade detects bad data, that's an error in the program rather than an error in the data.Read more at location 5237

B00JDMPOSY 786024 Note: Add a note

Fail hard during development so that you can fail softer during production.Read more at location 5280

B00JDMPOSY 791994 Note: Add a note

Production code should handle errors in a more sophisticated way than "garbage in, garbage out."Read more at location 5432

B00JDMPOSY 814795 Note: Add a note

Write pseudocode at the level of intent. Describe the meaning of the approach rather than how the approach will be implemented in the target language.Read more at location 5496

B00JDMPOSY 824418 Note: Add a note

Research functionality available in the standard libraries. The single biggest way to improve both the quality of your code and your productivity is to reuse good code.Read more at location 5601

B00JDMPOSY 840282 Note: Add a note

Aside from taking the approaches suggested for these two general situations, it's usually a waste of effort to work on efficiency at the level of individual routines. The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.Read more at location 5623

B00JDMPOSY 843600 Note: Add a note

Start with the general and work toward something more specific. The most general part of a routine is a header comment describing what the routine is supposed to do, so first write a concise statement of the purpose of the routine.Read more at location 5636

B00JDMPOSY 845527 Note: Add a note

Trouble in writing the general comment is a warning that you need to understand the routine's role in the program better.Read more at location 5638

B00JDMPOSY 845728 Note: Add a note

The general idea is to iterate the routine in pseudocode until the pseudocode statements become simple enough that you can fill in code below each statement and leave the original pseudocode as documentation.Read more at location 5673

B00JDMPOSY 851093 Note: Add a note

Keep refining and decomposing the pseudocode until it seems like a waste of time to write it instead of the actual code.Read more at location 5676

B00JDMPOSY 851459 Note: Add a note

Mentally executing a routine is difficult, and that difficulty is one reason to keep your routines small.Read more at location 5802

B00JDMPOSY 870288 Note: Add a note

Bottom line: A working routine isn't enough. If you don't know why it works, study it, discuss it, and experiment with alternative designs until you do.Read more at location 5812

B00JDMPOSY 871888 Note: Add a note

Avoid the rush to completion by not compiling until you've convinced yourself that the routine is right.Read more at location 5819

B00JDMPOSY 872916 Note: Add a note

Implicit declaration is one of the most hazardous features available in any language.Read more at location 6001

B00JDMPOSY 900218 Note: Add a note

Use the compiler setting that automatically initializes all variables. IfRead more at location 6103

B00JDMPOSY 915489 Note: Add a note

Make sure you document your use of the compiler setting; assumptions that rely on specific compiler settings are hard to uncover otherwise.Read more at location 6106

B00JDMPOSY 915932 Note: Add a note

Close to forty percent of those who begin high school, drop out before they finish. For college, the figure is one in three.Read more at location 3

B018P2AB94 465 Note: Add a note

Why do they fail? They fail because they are afraid, bored, and confused.Read more at location 9

B018P2AB94 1364 Note: Add a note

It was my job and my chosen task to help children learn things, and if they did not learn what I taught them, it was my job and task to try other ways of teaching them until I found ways that worked.Read more at location 32

B018P2AB94 4970 Note: Add a note

"Blame" and "guilt" are crybaby words. Let's get them out of our talk about education. Let's use instead the word "responsible." Let's have schools and teachers begin to hold themselves responsible for the results of what they do.Read more at location 37

B018P2AB94 5743 Note: Add a note

There is now a lot of talk about raising our standards higher, about "making sure" that children know what they are "supposed to know" before allowing them into the next grade. What will this lead to in practice? Mostly, to a lot more of the fakery I talk about in this book— i.e., giving children intensive coaching just before the tests so that they will appear to know what in fact they do not know at all. Also to a highly selective enforcement of these rules—we can expect to see many more poor and/or non-white children held back than affluent whites. Finally, we will find out once more what by now we should have learned: that many or most children repeating a grade do no better the second time through than they did the first, if even as well. Why should they? If a certain kind of teaching failed to produce learning the first time, why will it suddenly produce it the second time? In many cases the children, now ashamed and angry as well as bored and confused, will do even worse than before—and will probably disrupt the class as well.Read more at location 45

B018P2AB94 7766 Note: Add a note

(1) if the students did not learn, the schools did not blame them, or their families, backgrounds, neighborhoods, attitudes, nervous systems, or whatever. They did not alibi. They took full responsibility for the results or non-results of their work. (2) When something they were doing in the class did not work, they stopped doing it, and tried to do something else. They flunked unsuccessful methods, not the children.Read more at location 59

B018P2AB94 9264 Note: Add a note

Most of us have very imperfect control over our attention. Our minds slip away from duty before we realize that they are gone. Part of being a good student is learning to be aware of that state of ones own mind and the degree of one's own understanding. The good student may be one who often says that he does not understand, simply because he keeps a constant check on his understanding. The poor student, who does not, so to speak, watch himself trying to understand, does not know most of the time whether he understands or not. Thus the problem is not to get students to ask us what they don't know; the problem is to make them aware of the difference between what they know and what they don't.Read more at location 123

B018P2AB94 19146 Note: Add a note

teacher who asks a question is tuned to the right answer, ready to hear it, eager to hear it, since it will tell him that his teaching is good and that he can go on to the next topic. He will assume that anything that sounds close to the right answer is meant to be the right answer. So, for a student who is not sure of the answer, a mumble may be his best bet. If he's not sure whether something is spelled with an a or an o, he writes a letter that could be either one of them.Read more at location 193

B018P2AB94 29350 Note: Add a note

I see now that I was wrong about Emily's task. The task for her was not to spell "microscopic," or write a word backwards, or balance a weight The thought in her mind must have been something like this: "These teachers want me to do something. I haven't got the faintest idea what it is, or why in the world they want me to do it. But I’ll do something, and then maybe they'll let me alone."Read more at location 212

B018P2AB94 32082 Note: Add a note

Yon can't find out what a child does in class by looking at him only when he is called on. You have to watch him for long stretches of time without his knowing it.Read more at location 288

B018P2AB94 43267 Note: Add a note

A teacher in class is like a man in the woods at night with a powerful flashlight in his hand. Wherever he turns his light, the creatures on whom it shines are aware of it, and do not behave as they do in the dark. Thus the mere fact of his watching their behavior changes it into something very different. Shine where be will, he can never know very much of the night life of the woods.Read more at location 302

B018P2AB94 45610 Note: Add a note

There should be more situations in which two experienced teachers share the same class, teaching and observing the same group of kids, thinking, and talking to each other, about what they see and hear.Read more at location 314

B018P2AB94 47159 Note: Add a note

For children, the central business of school is not learning, whatever this vague word means; it is getting these daily tasks done, or at least out of the way, with a minimum of effort and unpleasantness. Each task is an end in itself. The children don't care how they dispose of it. If they can get it out of the way by doing it, they will do it; if experience has taught them that this does not work very well, they will turn to other means, illegitimate means, that wholly defeat whatever purpose the task giver may have had in mind.Read more at location 356

B018P2AB94 53800 Note: Add a note

The trouble was that I was asking too many questions. In time I learned to shut up and stop asking questions, stop constantly trying to find out how much people understood. We have to let learners decide when they want to ask questions. It often takes them a long time even to find out what questions they want to ask. It is not the teacher's proper task to be constantly testing and checking the understanding of the learner. That's the learner's task, and only the learner can do it. The teacher's job is to answer questions when learners ask them, or to try to help learners understand better when they ask for that help.Read more at location 384

B018P2AB94 58146 Note: Add a note

We have to convince the children that they must not be afraid to ask questions; but further than that, we must get across the idea that some questions are more useful than others, and that to the right kind of question the answer "No" can be as revealing as "Yes." Here is where Twenty Questions, the card game, the balance beam, all come in handy. The scientist who asks a question of nature—i.e., performs an experiment—tries to ask one such that he will gain information whichever way his experiment comes out, and will have an idea of what to do next. He asks his questions with a purpose. This is a subtle art. Can fifth-graders learn some of it?Read more at location 408

B018P2AB94 61715 Note: Add a note

My method was to take letters that I had cut out of one of the Words in Color charts, use these letters to make short syllables, and ask him to read them. I see now that it would probably have been better to let him make the syllables and/or words and let me pronounce them—though from time to time we may also have worked in that way.Read more at location 423

B018P2AB94 63749 Note: Add a note

Gattegno called these "transformations," seeing how changing one letter in a word could change the sound of the word—a good idea.Read more at location 427

B018P2AB94 64064 Note: Add a note

It would probably have been much more useful for him and for me if I had used our time together to read aloud to him from books of his choosing, or let him read them silently, with the understanding that whenever he wanted, he could ask me what a word meant and I would tell him—without any questions, explanations, or sound-it-outs.Read more at location 445

B018P2AB94 66976 Note: Add a note

Worth noting here that a couple of years later, when I put a balance beam and some Weights on a table at the back of class, and just left it there without saying anything about it or trying to "teach" it, most of the children in the class, including some very poor students, figured out just by messing around with it how it worked.Read more at location 480

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One day I said I was thinking of a number between 1 and 10,000. Children who use a good narrowing-down strategy to find a number between 1 and 100, or 1 and 500, go all to pieces when the number is between 1 and 10,000. Many start guessing from the very beginning.Read more at location 508

B018P2AB94 76360 Note: Add a note

They still cling stubbornly to the idea that the only good answer is a yes answer. This, of course, is the result of the miseducation in which "right answers" are the only ones that pay off. They have not learned how to learn from a mistake, or even that learning from mistakes is possible. If they say, "Is the number between 5,000 and 10,000?" and I say yes, they cheer; if I say no, they groan, even though they get exactly the same amount of information in either case. The more anxious ones will, over and over again, ask questions that have already been answered, just for the satisfaction of hearing a yes.Read more at location 513

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We, and not math, or reading, or spelling, or history, were the problem that the children had designed their strategies to cope with.Read more at location 527

B018P2AB94 79164 Note: Add a note

Most children in school are at least as afraid of the mockery and contempt of their peer group as they are of the teacher.Read more at location 537

B018P2AB94 80663 Note: Add a note

I realized, at first intuitively, later with much thought, that the shriek was part of what made the Q work--and it worked very well. It was the children's way of making that Q theirs as well as mine, and because it was theirs as well as mine, they respectedRead more at location 589

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Indeed, if I put it up, it was usually because the children themselves, wanting a little more peace and quiet, would ask me to.Read more at location 611

B018P2AB94 91744 Note: Add a note

Children who undertake to do things, like my five-year-old friend Vita who is beginning the very serious study of the violin, do not think in terms of success and failure but of effort and adventure. It is only when pleasing adults become important that the sharp line between success and failure appears.Read more at location 644

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Music is a good thing for teachers to study, because it creates in us the kind of tension that children live under all the time in the classroom, and that most adults have long forgotten.Read more at location 661

B018P2AB94 99267 Note: Add a note

Worrying about whether you did the right thing, while painful enough, is less painful than worrying about the right thing to do.Read more at location 693

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But most homework, when it is not pure busywork to fill up the children's time, is designed to convince the teacher, not the children, that they know something. And so it rarely does good, and usually does harm.Read more at location 705

B018P2AB94 105834 Note: Add a note

If, when Johnny does good work, we make him feel "good," may we not, without intending it, be making him feel "bad" when he does bad work?Read more at location 733

B018P2AB94 110061 Note: Add a note

Detective Baker asked Belnap if she was dating anyone, a question cops often ask women who report they’ve been raped. “When I said, ‘Yes, I am,’ ” Belnap remembered, “the way he reacted made me feel like he assumed I had cheated on my boyfriend and then lied about being raped to cover it up, even though that wasn’t the case at all.”Read more at location 775

B00THFU680 116607 Note: Add a note

But the relevant law, Montana statute 45-5-501, doesn’t say a victim has to be “physically helpless” to be incapable of giving consent, as Muir incorrectly asserted. The law states that a victim is incapable of consent if he or she is “mentally defective or incapacitated”; “physically helpless”; or “overcome by deception, coercion, or surprise.” And with a blood alcohol content of .219 percent more than two hours after the alleged rapes began, it’s hard to imagine that Belnap wasn’t mentally incapacitated to a significant degree.Read more at location 814

B00THFU680 122759 Note: Add a note

After a victim has reported a crime to the police, many people believe that the decision whether or not to charge the suspect with a crime, and then prosecute the suspect, is the prerogative of the victim. News media often contribute to this misconception in stories about rape victims by reporting that a victim “declined to press charges.” In fact, the criminal justice system gives victims no direct say in the matter. It’s the police, for the most part, who decide whether a suspect should be arrested, and prosecutors who ultimately determine whether a conviction should be pursued.Read more at location 1409

B00THFU680 211843 Note: Add a note

some people would argue that if I go home with someone and we say, ‘Well, we’re going to go have sex,’ and then I fall asleep and wake up and he’s having sex with me—some people would say that’s consensual, and some people would say it’s not.”Read more at location 1634

B00THFU680 245282 Note: Add a note

By Smith’s own admission, his understanding of female sexuality was derived primarily from Internet pornography. Hence his explanation to Dean Couture, in October, that he wanted to make Kelly “squirt.” The porn Smith viewed led him to believe that vaginal squirting was the supreme female expression of sexual pleasure and that frenetically jabbing his fingers into her vagina and anus would elicit such a response.Read more at location 1689

B00THFU680 253682 Note: Add a note

“One of the key messages in the video,” Kevin Barrett told me, “is how important it is for you, as a cop, to always believe the victim until every witness has been interviewed and all the available evidence has been gathered, and only then make a determination as to whether or not she is telling the truth. In most crimes, that’s what cops do. But in sexual-assault cases, too many cops don’t take that approach. So I asked Muir, ‘If you used that video to train your officers, how come one of them asked Kerry if she had a boyfriend? And why did your detective tell her that the defendant cried and talked about how his reputation would be ruined if he was charged? Why do your detectives seem more concerned about the defendant than the victim?’Read more at location 1856

B00THFU680 279112 Note: Add a note

Kanin’s 1994 article on false allegations is a provocative opinion piece, but it is not a scientific study of the issue of false reporting of rape. It certainly should never be used to assert a scientific foundation for the frequency of false allegations….It simply reflects the conclusions of…[police] officers whose procedures have been rejected by the U.S. Department of Justice and by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.Read more at location 1893

B00THFU680 284382 Note: Add a note

When an individual is raped in this country, more than 90 percent of the time the rapist gets away with the crime.Read more at location 1992

B00THFU680 298842 Note: Add a note

“Statistically, the odds that any given rape was committed by a serial offender are around 90 percent,” Lisak said.Read more at location 2200

B00THFU680 330033 Note: Add a note

Being raped is such a traumatic experience, Roe explained to me, that it often results in seemingly bizarre behavior. Fear could certainly account for Cecilia Washburn’s unexpected actions, she said. But so could something as mundane as culturalization. “It was actually pretty common for women not to scream or call the cops in rape cases I prosecuted,” Roe said, “at least partly because women aren’t wired to react that way. We are socialized to be likeable and not to create friction. We are brought up to be nice. Women are supposed to resolve problems without making a scene—to make bad things go away as if they never happened.”Read more at location 2450

B00THFU680 368207 Note: Add a note

As David Lisak has noted, persuading a jury to convict a serial rapist is a lot easier than convicting someone who’s under suspicion for committing only a single rape.Read more at location 2637

B00THFU680 395650 Note: Add a note

“Before Beau attacked me,” McLaughlin said, “I’d never been an anxious person. But around the time he was arrested, I realized that since 2008 there had been a huge spike in my anxiety level. I used to be a very active runner and loved running outside. Now I’m afraid to run outside by myself.” Indeed, she said, ever since the attack she’s been terrified to be alone. Whenever she was by herself and had to walk from her house to her car at night, she would call her husband, Robert, and ask him to keep talking to her until she was safely inside the vehicle with the doors locked. “He did it,” McLaughlin said, “but he never understood why I was so scared.”Read more at location 2728

B00THFU680 409977 Note: Add a note

They made it pretty clear that they didn’t like it when I spoke up or questioned what they were doing, or asked them to do more than they wanted to. It was really hard for me. I see now why most girls who’ve been raped don’t go forward with pressing charges.”Read more at location 2880

B00THFU680 432230 Note: Add a note

Donaldson told his friends and family that he and Huguet had had sex multiple times before, “so he couldn’t have raped her.”Read more at location 2930

B00THFU680 439519 Note: Add a note

Denial was not uncommon in perpetrators undergoing this kind of evaluation, he said: “It’s an indication of the necessity [for aggressive] sex-offender treatment.”Read more at location 3706

B00THFU680 556071 Note: Add a note

All I’m asking the court to do is look at the broad, available forms of punishment and tailor that punishment, not only to the crime but to the defendant….Read more at location 3799

B00THFU680 569949 Note: Add a note

Nor is a pre-trial motion an appropriate way to make a claim that a rape victim did not act like a rape victim should.Read more at location 3901

B00THFU680 585138 Note: Add a note

She boasts on her website of having “a 99 percent success rate at trial.” But the reason her winning percentage is so high is that she didn’t accept cases for prosecution during those seventeen years unless she was almost certain she would win in court or strong-arm the defendant into copping a plea. According to the investigation of the Missoula County Attorney’s Office by the U.S. Department of Justice, during the final four-plus years of Kirsten Pabst’s tenure running the criminal division of the MCAO, the MCAO prosecuted only 12 percent of the sexual-assault cases involving adult women referred to it by the Missoula Police Department. Pabst’s phenomenal success rate should therefore be cause for concern, rather than congratulation. As an experienced prosecutor told me, “If you’re winning 99 percent of the time you go to trial, you’re not prosecuting nearly enough of the cases that land on your desk.”Read more at location 4002

B00THFU680 601198 Note: Add a note

Montana’s “rape shield law,” which decrees that an accuser’s previous sexual conduct is inadmissible as evidence.Read more at location 4053

B00THFU680 608053 Note: Add a note

“If prosecutors make statements in court that aren’t true, and the defendant is convicted, the defense can appeal and get the conviction overturned. But there is no corresponding deterrent when defense lawyers make untrue statements, because if a defendant is acquitted, the prosecution can’t appeal.”Read more at location 4121

B00THFU680 618372 Note: Add a note

“The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful.” It’s an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat.Read more at location 4125

B00THFU680 619107 Note: Add a note

Indeed, if one set out intentionally to design a system for provoking symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, it might look very much like a court of law.Read more at location 4147

B00THFU680 622140 Note: Add a note

It is a common assumption that any woman threatened with being raped would do everything in her power to physically resist, Dr. Lisak said, “but it’s not what we find….In fact, most women who are sexually assaulted do not resist. The fear is overwhelming. They often feel helpless. Sometimes they make a conscious choice not to resist because they are afraid if they resist, they will be hurt even worse.” Many victims report afterward to the police that they actually tried “to placate the assailant as a strategy to avoid further harm.”Read more at location 4340

B00THFU680 651549 Note: Add a note

According to many peer-reviewed studies, a large percentage of the victims of non-stranger rapes “actually feared they were going to be killed,” even when “there was no weapon and no overt violence.”Read more at location 4349

B00THFU680 652483 Note: Add a note

Moreover, Lisak said, self-blame seems “to be more accentuated” when victims are raped by an acquaintance. He said that non-stranger rape is “oftentimes more difficult to recover from,” as well, because “if you have been assaulted by somebody you thought you could trust, how do you restore your sense of trust in the world or in people? And how do you trust yourself?” After being betrayed and violated by a person you were sure would never harm you, “how do you then trust your own judgment thereafter?…That’s a hard thing to resolve. And it seems to feed self-blame….You say, ‘Well, it was my fault it happened, so I’ll fix the things that I did wrong, and that will prevent this from happening to me again.”Read more at location 4379

B00THFU680 657512 Note: Add a note

After the video of Washburn’s genitals finished playing and the public was readmitted to the courtroom,Read more at location 4491

B00THFU680 673750 Note: Add a note

More importantly, the Defendant is asserting…a right he did not have at the investigative stage. The presumption of innocence is not a specifically enumerated constitutional right; it is a doctrine embodied in the right to a fair trial. In other words, it is a trial right.Read more at location 4662

B00THFU680 699534 Note: Add a note

“A victim’s distress,” she began, may create an unwillingness or psychological inability to assist in the investigation. Officers and investigators play a significant role in both the victim’s willingness to cooperate in the investigation and ability to cope with the emotional and psychological aftereffects of the crime. Therefore, it is especially important that these cases be handled from a nonjudgmental perspective, so as not to communicate in any way to a victim that the victim is to blame for the crime. Every sex crime investigation is to be initiated with the belief it is true until evidence demonstrates otherwise.Read more at location 4682

B00THFU680 703046 Note: Add a note

how he’s more smarter [sic] than all of us. And then, on the other hand, they even encouraged you to use your common sense, except when it comes to the Boston expert. He knows better. I thought it was condescending and presumptuous for them to say to you, ‘He knows so much more about this, so you need to listen to him.’ I don’t buy that. The judge instructed you to use your common sense, and I hope you will, because common sense is what’s needed in this case.”Read more at location 5048

B00THFU680 757678 Note: Add a note

Ridiculing Lisak’s explanation for why rape victims often failed to flee, or scream, or fight back when they were assaulted, Paoli warned the jury not to be fooled. When people are afraid, he asserted, they run. “That’s common sense. That’s not expert stuff from Boston.”Read more at location 5053

B00THFU680 758211 Note: Add a note

As Paoli performed this crude reenactment of the alleged rape, Cecilia Washburn and her family watched from the gallery with horror and disgust.Read more at location 5072

B00THFU680 760902 Note: Add a note

He made a noticeable impression on all in the courtroom when he stated ‘she moaned’ ” while they were having intercourse, which the jury interpreted as a sign that Washburn was enjoying the sexual encounter.Read more at location 5210

B00THFU680 781681 Note: Add a note

“Texting was a foreign concept” to some of her fellow jurors, Fargo observed, so the significance of the text Washburn sent to Stephen Green saying, “Omg, I think I might have just gotten raped” might well have been lost on them.Read more at location 5226

B00THFU680 784147 Note: Add a note

Asserting that an alleged rape victim was moaning seems to be an effective means of persuading police, prosecutors, judges, and/or jurors that the sex was consensual, rather than an act of rape, even though people moan in fear and pain, as well as pleasure. But the “moaning” defense worked for Jordan Johnson, it worked for the four Griz football players accused of raping Kelsey Belnap in 2010, and it worked for Jameis Winston, the Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback for Florida State University, when he was accused of raping a female student in December 2012. Two years later, when Winston was asked during a student conduct hearing “in what manner, verbally or physically,” the female gave consent, he claimed she provided consent by “moaning.” Winston was cleared of misconduct. The moaning defense isn’t always successful, however. When Kaitlynn Kelly accused UM student Calvin Smith of raping her in October 2011, Smith said part of the reason he believed Kelly consented to having sex was that “she was moaning,” but the University Court found him guilty of rape, regardless.Read more at location 5249

B00THFU680 788536 Note: Add a note

This was a preposterous assertion. Nobody had forced Beau Donaldson to take a plea deal. Nothing had prevented him from going to trial and having his future decided by a jury of his peers.Read more at location 5468

B00THFU680 820300 Note: Add a note

[A] young woman who had suffered a gang rape as a student at the University of Montana…described feeling re-traumatized by the experience of seeking to have the assault prosecuted by the County Attorney’s Office. As a result of hearing about that experience, a friend of the woman declined to report her own rape to either the police or prosecutors.Read more at location 5576

B00THFU680 836624 Note: Add a note

The report warned, “Since the majority of sexual assaults are committed by repeat offenders,” the effect of the MCAO’s failure to file charges was compromising “the safety of women in the Missoula community as a whole,” because “perpetrators who escape prosecution remain in the community to reoffend.”Read more at location 5581

B00THFU680 837485 Note: Add a note

Of equal concern, we found that the County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute nearly every case of non-stranger assault involving an adult woman victim who was, at the time of the assault, subject to some type of heightened vulnerability—for example, in cases where the assault was facilitated by drugs or alcohol,…even when the assailant had confessed or made incriminating statementsRead more at location 5589

B00THFU680 838747 Note: Add a note

As the DOJ report pointed out, the successful prosecution of rape cases—particularly cases involving non-stranger rape—requires a sophisticated grasp of the latest legal and scientific knowledge. “It is imperative,” the report admonished, “for state and local prosecutors to be aware of rape myths and how juries may be influenced by these myths.” Prosecutors needed to understand the neurochemical basis for the counterintuitive behavior that victims often display during sexual assaults, and in their aftermath. They had to be able to explain to juries why rape victims don’t always respond in a manner that conforms to jurors’ expectations, as well as why victims may not be able to recall the details of being raped. Prior to the initiation of the DOJ investigation, the report noted, “the County Attorney’s Office provided little, if any, such training.”Read more at location 5757

B00THFU680 864343 Note: Add a note

Police detectives, according to the DOJ report, were “frustrated” by the refusal of the MCAO to prosecute seemingly strong cases: The work of Missoula Police detectives is compromised by the fact that, even if they expend the resources to conduct a comprehensive investigation, the Missoula County Attorney’s Office often will not charge the case. One woman reported that the Missoula Police detective in her case informed her that because “no one had a limb cut off and there was no video of the incident,” prosecutors “wouldn’t see this [the rape] as anything more than a girl getting drunk at a party.”…[I]n one case from early 2013, a detective told both the victim and the offender…that the County Attorney’s office would never file charges in the case—despite the fact that the detective acknowledged to the victim that she had been raped by the offender.Read more at location 5764

B00THFU680 865640 Note: Add a note

This expert noted that the county attorney’s office refused to prosecute some sexual-assault cases even when detectives provided prosecutors with a confession or an eyewitness.Read more at location 5774

B00THFU680 866248 Note: Add a note

This suggests that, rather than being the nation’s rape capital, Missoula had an incidence of sexual assault that was in fact slightly less than the national average. That’s the real scandal.Read more at location 5803

B00THFU680 870542 Note: Add a note

The courtroom oath—“to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”—is applicable only to witnesses.Read more at location 5823

B00THFU680 873480 Note: Add a note

Some of the country’s most esteemed universities (Harvard being a prime example) have the most dysfunctional, poorly conceived sexual-assault policies.Read more at location 5838

B00THFU680 875798 Note: Add a note

The reaction to Will’s remarks was caustic and swift. “The last word I ever expected to hear to describe a rape victim is ‘privileged,’ ” wrote Jessica Valenti in the Guardian. “It takes a particular kind of ignorance to argue that people who come forward to report being raped in college are afforded benefits of any kind.”Read more at location 5870

B00THFU680 880852 Note: Add a note

The criminal justice system simply moves too slowly and is constrained by too many “formidable procedural obstacles,” as Judge Posner put it, to reliably punish campus rapists and remove them from the academic community.Read more at location 5882

B00THFU680 882527 Note: Add a note

The oft-repeated claim that university adjudications categorically deny the constitutional right of due process to perpetrators is specious. Campus disciplinary proceedings cannot, and should not, be held to the same restrictive standards as criminal proceedings, because they don’t result in incarceration or require the rapist to register as a sex offender. University officials, like high school officials, must be allowed to expel students who pose a threat to other students, without waiting many months, or even years, for the criminal justice system to run its course—a course that all too often fails to convict individuals who are guilty of rape, or even charge them with a crime.Read more at location 5886

B00THFU680 883602 Note: Add a note

Females between sixteen and twenty-four years old face a higher risk of being sexually assaulted than any other age group. Most victims of campus rape are preyed upon when they are in their first or second year of college, usually by someone they know. And it’s during the initial days and weeks of a student’s freshman year, when she is in the midst of negotiating the fraught transition from girlhood to womanhood, that she is probably in the greatest danger.Read more at location 5905

B00THFU680 886169 Note: Add a note

Laura suffered intensely for many years from being sexually assaulted. And her misery, she said, was magnified by the stigma attached to the unhealthy compulsions that tyrannized her existence after the assaults. In this regard she was like many other rape victims. Their self-destructive behaviors are often held up as “proof” that they are unreliable and morally compromised, or that they deserved to be raped.Read more at location 5928

B00THFU680 889536 Note: Add a note

Rape and war, she explained, are among the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and survivors of sexual assault frequently exhibit many of the same symptoms and behaviors as survivors of combat: flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, hypervigilance, depression, isolation, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, unrelenting anxiety, and an inability to shake the feeling that the world is spinning out of control.Read more at location 5943

B00THFU680 891748 Note: Add a note

Rapists rely on the silence of their victims to elude accountability. Simply by recounting their stories and breaking that silence, survivors of sexual assault strike a powerful blow against their assailants. Inevitably, many victims who come forward will be disbelieved, and will fail to find justice in the courts, in the halls of academia, or anywhere else. But by speaking out, they are likely to encourage other victims to tell their stories, too, and may find that they’ve advanced their own recovery in the bargain. As more and more survivors emerge from the shadows and reveal the pervasiveness of sexual assault, they draw strength from their numbers. This collective fortitude touches all victims, even those too fearful to speak for themselves, by eradicating the undeserved sense of shame that is so often borne in isolation.Read more at location 5950

B00THFU680 893293 Note: Add a note

Yahoo, where he worked at the time, had designated parking for expectant mothers at the front of each building.Read more at location 48

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announced that we needed pregnancy parking, preferably sooner rather than later. He looked up at me and agreed immediately, noting that he had never thought about it before.Read more at location 51

B009LMTDL0 7714 Note: Add a note

knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better.Read more at location 67

B009LMTDL0 10000 Note: Add a note

The gap is even worse for women of color, who hold just 4 percent of top corporate jobs, 4 percent of board seats, and 6 percent of congressional seats.Read more at location 78

B009LMTDL0 11778 Note: Add a note

The laws of economics and many studies of diversity tell us that if we tapped the entire pool of human resources and talent, our collective performance would improve.Read more at location 102

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how American women could help those who experienced the horrors and mass rapes of war in places like Liberia. Her response was four simple words: “More women in power.Read more at location 108

B009LMTDL0 16260 Note: Add a note

Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.Read more at location 110

B009LMTDL0 16530 Note: Add a note

Men have an easier time finding the mentors and sponsors who are invaluable for career progression.Read more at location 114

B009LMTDL0 17172 Note: Add a note

Social scientists have observed that when members of a group are made aware of a negative stereotype, they are more likely to perform according to that stereotype. For example, stereotypically, boys are better at math and science than girls. When girls are reminded of their gender before a math or science test, even by something as simple as checking off an M or F box at the top of the test, they perform worse.Read more at location 327

B009LMTDL0 49392 Note: Add a note

The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.Read more at location 355

B009LMTDL0 54341 Note: Add a note

It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable.Read more at location 364

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Both men and women are susceptible to the impostor syndrome, but women tend to experience it more intensely and be more limited by it.2Read more at location 425

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Even the wildly successful writer and actress Tina Fey has admitted to these feelings. She once explained to a British newspaper, “The beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between extreme egomania, and a complete feeling of: ‘I’m a fraud! Oh god, they’re on to me! I’m a fraud!’ So you just try to ride the egomania when it comes and enjoy it, and then slide through the idea of fraud. Seriously, I’ve just realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I try not to feel too bad about it.”Read more at location 427

B009LMTDL0 64495 Note: Add a note

Multiple studies in multiple industries show that women often judge their own performance as worse than it actually is, while men judge their own performance as better than it actually is.Read more at location 432

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Assessments of students in a surgery rotation found that when asked to evaluate themselves, the female students gave themselves lower scores than the male students despite faculty evaluations that showed the women outperformed the men.4 A survey of several thousand potential political candidates revealed that despite having comparable credentials, the men were about 60 percent more likely to think that they were “very qualified” to run for political office.5 A study of close to one thousand Harvard law students found that in almost every category of skills relevant to practicing law, women gave themselves lower scores than men.6 Even worse, when women evaluate themselves in front of other people or in stereotypically male domains, their underestimations can become even more pronounced.Read more at location 433

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When a man fails, he points to factors like “didn’t study enough” or “not interested in the subject matter.” When a woman fails, she is more likely to believe it is due to an inherent lack of ability.8 And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the woman’s self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree.9 The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurt future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences.10Read more at location 444

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When I don’t feel confident, one tactic I’ve learned is that it sometimes helps to fakeRead more at location 497

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Research backs up this “fake it till you feel it” strategy. One study found that when people assumed a high-power pose (for example, taking up space by spreading their limbs) for just two minutes, their dominance hormone levels (testosterone) went up and their stress hormone levels (cortisol) went down. As a result, they felt more powerful and in charge and showed a greater tolerance for risk. A simple change in posture led to a significant change in attitude.Read more at location 503

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increasingly, opportunities are not well defined but, instead, come from someone jumping in to do something. That something then becomes his job.Read more at location 520

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The gender of the person to whom women make a self-assessment has sometimes been found to affect the degree to which they underestimate themselves, with some evidence finding that women lower their self-assessments in the presence of vulnerable male partners, for example by lowering estimates of their GPA in front of a male partner who is worried about his grades.Read more at location 3070

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Historically, estimates have generally stated that there are many more trans women than trans men, and some theories have suggested that people who are assigned female at birth transition less because there is greater social acceptance for maneuvering with more masculine expression. More recently, experts have estimated that there are probably about the same number of trans men and women.Read more at location 373

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Dallas Denny and Jamison Green comment on the use of transgender as a noun: “Transgender is increasingly used as a noun to describe individuals generically—such as ‘Samantha is a transgender, ’ not ‘a transgender woman’ or ‘a transgender person’—as though their variance from gender norms was their most significant feature. Though some of the main journalism guides support this, we feel the word transgender should modify a noun rather than becoming one. Giving it some grammatical context and variability as an adjective helps ensure this. When trans people are described only as ‘transgenders, ’ we feel the term easily dehumanizes us.”Read more at location 390

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Obviously not all queers think alike but, to me, ‘queer’ is about questioning and/or rejecting normative views.Read more at location 602

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“I consider myself genderqueer because I feel uncomfortable with the gender binary, and I am unhappy when I feel pressured to conform to the binary gender role expectations of women or men. I think a lot of cisgender people feel the same way to a degree.”Read more at location 682

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“Two-Spirit is the best word to describe myself. I hate the words transgender, queer, gay, fag(got), trans man, boi, gender-bender, gender variant and gender queer. Those words belong in white culture and I don’t like their oppression and colonization to extend to my identity because they don’t own that.”Read more at location 697

B00KQK8ZNS 104781 Note: Add a note

While the Hijras once held sacred status and prescribed roles in religious rites pertaining to births and marriages, in modern times the community struggles with issues of HIV/AIDS and homelessness.Read more at location 716

B00KQK8ZNS 107594 Note: Add a note

gay men who are seen as especially feminine are more likely to be harassed than those who are seen as more masculine.Read more at location 812

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-Feminine boys are viewed far more negatively, and brought in for psychotherapy far more often, than masculine girls. Psychiatric diagnoses directed against the transgender population often either focus solely on trans female/feminine individuals or are written in such a way that trans female/feminine people are more easily and frequently pathologized than their trans male/masculine counterparts.Read more at location 828

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-The majority of violence committed against gender-variant individuals targets individuals on the trans female/feminine spectrum. In the media, jokes and demeaning depictions of gender-variant people primarily focus on trans female/feminine spectrum people.Read more at location 831

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-Perhaps the most visible example of trans-misogyny is the way in which trans women and others on the trans female/feminine spectrum are routinely sexualized. The common (but mistaken) presumption that trans women (but not trans men) are sexually motivated in their transitions comes from a broader cultural assumption that a woman’s power and worth stems primarily from her ability to be sexualized by others.Read more at location 833

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Many of us fit into at least one of the “default” categories of our society; this gives us privilege in certain ways. Privilege refers to advantages conferred by society to certain groups, not seized by individuals.Read more at location 849

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Acknowledging privilege is not a moral condemnation. Rather, it is a call to action that requires collective work in order to more evenly distribute access to power and to resources so that human agency can be reclaimed and claimed by all.Read more at location 1025

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Laverne Cox, an African American trans woman, made history by becoming the first trans woman of color in reality television by appearing on the first season of VH1’s Who Wants to Work for Diddy? designed to find an assistant for rapper icon P. Diddy. After her popular run on the show, Ms. Cox went on to produce the VH1 makeover spot TRANSForm, making her the first African American trans woman to create and star in her own television show.Read more at location 1041

B00KQK8ZNS 156558 Note: Add a note

Being mixed-race feels a lot like being genderqueer; I have a pretty clear understanding of my own identities, but the world around me struggles to identify me and comes to different conclusions about what they believe I am.Read more at location 1070

B00KQK8ZNS 160694 Note: Add a note

I live in a space of gray, which is what queerness is all about to me: defining oneself rather than being trapped within unchangeable categories.Read more at location 1073

B00KQK8ZNS 161032 Note: Add a note

The phrase “people of color” was introduced to replace terms like “non-white” and “minority” because non-white defines us in terms of what we are not, and minority implies that a group is smaller or less important than another.Read more at location 1075

B00KQK8ZNS 161510 Note: Add a note

According to the annual Hate Violence Report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, in 2012, 53% of anti-LGBTQ homicides in the United States were against transgender women, and 73% were against people of color.Read more at location 1137

B00KQK8ZNS 170768 Note: Add a note

Overtime for salaried workers is a figment of the naïve manager’s imagination.Read more at location 331

B00DY5A8X2 49705 Note: Add a note

Nobody can really work much more than forty hours, at least not continually and with the level of intensity required for creative intellectual work.Read more at location 339

B00DY5A8X2 50993 Note: Add a note

People under time pressure don’t work better—they just work faster. In order to work faster, they may have to sacrifice the quality of the product and of their own work experience.Read more at location 390

B00DY5A8X2 58677 Note: Add a note

There may be many and varied causes of emotional reaction in one’s personal life, but in the workplace, the major arouser of emotions is threatened self-esteem.Read more at location 402

B00DY5A8X2 60435 Note: Add a note

Managers jeopardize product quality by setting unreachable deadlines. They don’t think about their action in such terms; they think rather that what they’re doing is throwing down an interesting challenge to their workers, something to help them strive for excellence.Read more at location 408

B00DY5A8X2 61362 Note: Add a note

In the long run, market-based quality costs more. The lesson here is, Quality, far beyond that required by the end user, is a means to higher productivity.Read more at location 443

B00DY5A8X2 66643 Note: Add a note

Parkinson’s Law almost certainly doesn’t apply to your people. Their lives are just too short to allow too much loafing on the job. Since they enjoy their work, they are disinclined to let it drag on forever—that would just delay the satisfaction they all hanker for. They are as eager as you are to get the job done, provided only that they don’t have to compromise their standard of quality.Read more at location 495

B00DY5A8X2 74720 Note: Add a note

Projects on which the boss applied no schedule pressure whatsoever (“Just wake me up when you’re done.”) had the highest productivity of all.Read more at location 546

B00DY5A8X2 82044 Note: Add a note

The decision to apply schedule pressure to a project needs to be made in much the same way you decide whether or not to punish your child: If punishment is rare and your timing is impeccable so the justification is easily apparent, then maybe it can help. If you do it all the time, it’s just a sign that you’ve got problems of your own.Read more at location 549

B00DY5A8X2 82585 Note: Add a note

Organizational busy work tends to expand to fill the working day.Read more at location 553

B00DY5A8X2 82978 Note: Add a note

The line that there is some magical innovation out there that you’ve missed is a pure fear tactic, employed by those with a vested interest in selling it.Read more at location 590

B00DY5A8X2 88572 Note: Add a note

Sharon knew what all good instinctive managers know: The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.Read more at location 628

B00DY5A8X2 94345 Note: Add a note

The only method we have ever seen used to confirm claims that the open plan improves productivity is proof by repeated assertion.Read more at location 861

B00DY5A8X2 129247 Note: Add a note

Workers who reported before the exercise that their workplace was acceptably quiet were one-third more likely to deliver zero-defect work.Read more at location 893

B00DY5A8X2 134001 Note: Add a note

Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all.Read more at location 955

B00DY5A8X2 143215 Note: Add a note

An organization that can’t make some assessment of its own productivity rate just hasn’t tried hard enough.Read more at location 964

B00DY5A8X2 144662 Note: Add a note

What matters is not the amount of time you’re present, but the amount of time that you’re working at full potential.Read more at location 1034

B00DY5A8X2 155133 Note: Add a note

A task-accounting scheme that records flow hours instead of body-present hours can give you two huge benefits: First, it focuses your people’s attention on the importance of flow time. If they learn that each workday is expected to afford them at least two or three hours free from interruption, they will take steps to protect those hours. The resultant interrupt-consciousness helps to protect them from casual interruption by peers.Read more at location 1040

B00DY5A8X2 156446 Note: Add a note

E-Factors were markedly higher in the four-person offices.Read more at location 1057

B00DY5A8X2 158472 Note: Add a note

If you believe that the environment is working against you, you’ve got to start saying so. You’ll need to create a forum for other people to chime in, too, perhaps with a survey of people’s assessment of their working conditions.Read more at location 1187

B00DY5A8X2 a2T0CPD3XBFFDG 178255 Note: make it easy for everyon to genereate questionnaires have the results be publicly viewable in a dashboard Edit

As people begin to realize that they aren’t alone in their feelings, environmental awareness increases.Read more at location 1190

B00DY5A8X2 178604 Note: Add a note

The next time someone proudly shows you around a newly designed office, think hard about whether it’s the functionality of the space that is being touted or its appearance.Read more at location 1214

B00DY5A8X2 182226 Note: Add a note

As any kid who does his arithmetic homework with the music on knows, the part of the brain required for arithmetic and related logic is unbothered by music—there’s another brain center that listens to the music.Read more at location 1228

B00DY5A8X2 184412 Note: Add a note

The University of Cambridge is a perfect example of organic order.Read more at location 1313

B00DY5A8X2 196944 Note: Add a note

Without communal eating, no human group can hold together.Read more at location 1406

B00DY5A8X2 210914 Note: Add a note

It almost always makes sense to move a project or work group out of corporate space. Work conducted in ad hoc space has got more energy and a higher success rate. People suffer less from noise and interruption and frustration. The quirky nature of their space helps them form a group identity.Read more at location 1433

B00DY5A8X2 215210 Note: Add a note

The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of management. Strong managers don’t care when team members cut their hair or whether they wear ties. Their pride is tied only to their staff’s accomplishments.Read more at location 1491

B00DY5A8X2 223846 Note: Add a note

Frequent interesting opportunities for private self-assessment are a must for workers in a healthy organization.Read more at location 1647

B00DY5A8X2 247082 Note: Add a note

Of course, the candidate will be nervous, perhaps even reluctant to undertake such an experience. You’ll have to explain that all candidates are nervous about the audition and give your reasons for holding one: to see the various candidates’ communication skills, and to give the future co-workers a part in the hiring process.Read more at location 1656

B00DY5A8X2 248627 Note: Add a note

It soon became clear that the audition process served to accelerate the socialization process between a new hire and the existing staff members. A successful audition was a kind of certification as a peer. The reverse seemed to hold true as well. Failed auditions were a morale booster for the staff. They were continuing proof that being hired for the group was more than just the dumb luck of when résumés happened to hit my desk.Read more at location 1667

B00DY5A8X2 250419 Note: Add a note

Disney Fellow Alan Kay defines technology as whatever is around you today but was not there when you were growing up. He further observes that what was already around you when you were growing up has a name: It’s called environment. One generation’s technology is the next generation’s environment.Read more at location 1715

B00DY5A8X2 257488 Note: Add a note

The problem is that continuous partial attention is the exact opposite of flow.Read more at location 1728

B00DY5A8X2 259234 Note: Add a note

The younger your people are, the more likely they are to see e-mail as a verbose and dreary waste of time.Read more at location 1757

B00DY5A8X2 263644 Note: Add a note

A reasonable assessment of start-up cost is therefore approximately three lost work-months per new hire.Read more at location 1777

B00DY5A8X2 266594 Note: Add a note

The total cost of replacing each person is the equivalent of four-and-a-half to five months of employee cost or about 20 percent of the cost of keeping that employee for the full two years on the job.Read more at location 1779

B00DY5A8X2 266913 Note: Add a note

the ancient philosopher Heraclitus remarked, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.’Read more at location 191

B005DXR5ZC 28687 Note: Add a note

Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.Read more at location 199

B005DXR5ZC 29876 Note: Add a note

The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable dates back to antiquity, and it still prevails. To this day, most courses in the philosophy of knowledge teach that knowledge is some form of justified, true belief, where ‘justified’ means designated as true (or at least ‘probable’) by reference to some authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge. Thus ‘how do we know…?’ is transformed into ‘by what authority do we claim…?’ The latter question is a chimera that may well have wasted more philosophers’ time and effort than any other idea. It converts the quest for truth into a quest for certainty (a feeling) or for endorsement (a social status). This misconception is called justificationism.Read more at location 220

B005DXR5ZC 33780 Note: Add a note

the logic of fallibilism is that one not only seeks to correct the misconceptions of the past, but hopes in the future to find and change mistaken ideas that no one today questions or finds problematic.Read more at location 232

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So the situation was that all the sources from which it was generally believed knowledge came actually knew very little, and were mistaken about most of the things that they claimed to know. And therefore progress depended on learning how to reject their authority. This is why the Royal Society (one of the earliest scientific academies, founded in London in 1660) took as its motto ‘Nullius in verba’, which means something like ‘Take no one’s word for it.’Read more at location 292

B005DXR5ZC 44202 Note: Add a note

Instrumentalism is one of many ways of denying realism, the commonsense, and true, doctrine that the physical world really exists, and is accessible to rational inquiry.Read more at location 335

B005DXR5ZC 50402 Note: Add a note

I don’t know, maybe your experience differed from mine. For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.Read more at location 293

B004J4WKUQ 44058 Note: Add a note

So I swallowed all of the dark ages nonsense they fed me. Some time passed. I grew up a little, and I gradually began to figure out that pretty much everyone had been lying to me about pretty much everything since the moment I emerged from my mother’s womb. This was an alarming revelation. It gave me trust issues later in life.Read more at location 297

B004J4WKUQ 44915 Note: Add a note

To quote the Almanac: “People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”Read more at location 440

B004J4WKUQ 65959 Note: Add a note

The school bell rang and a warning flashed in the corner of my display, informing me that I had forty minutes until the start of first period.Read more at location 534

B004J4WKUQ 80151 Note: Add a note

The ability to mute my peers was one of my favorite things about attending school online, and I took advantage of it almost daily.Read more at location 553

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At this school, the only real weapons were words, so I’d become skilled at wielding them.Read more at location 556

B004J4WKUQ 83457 Note: Add a note

And since the buildings were just pieces of software, their design wasn’t limited by monetary constraints, or even by the laws of physics.Read more at location 582

B004J4WKUQ 87404 Note: Add a note

It was also a lot easier for online teachers to hold their students’ attention, because here in the OASIS, the classrooms were like holodecks. Teachers could take their students on a virtual field trip every day, without ever leaving the school grounds.Read more at location 860

B004J4WKUQ 129143 Note: Add a note

City-sized shopping malls were erected in the blink of an eye, and storefronts spread across planets like time-lapse footage of mold devouring an orange.Read more at location 1073

B004J4WKUQ 161050 Note: Add a note

Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny.Read more at location 1104

B004J4WKUQ 165755 Note: Add a note

You’d be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is a lot of study time.Read more at location 1144

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I started to feel giddy. This was incredible. I was totally inside the movie. Halliday had transformed a fifty-year-old film into a real-time interactive videogame. I wondered how long it had taken him to program this thing.Read more at location 1970

B004J4WKUQ 295721 Note: Add a note

Morrow stayed on at GSS for five more years. Then, in the summer of 2022, he announced he was leaving the company. At the time, he claimed it was for “personal reasons.” But years later, Morrow wrote in his autobiography that he’d left GSS because “we were no longer in the videogame business,” and because he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. “It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote. “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.”Read more at location 2148

B004J4WKUQ 322781 Note: Add a note

Ogden and Kira “retired” to their home in Oregon and started a nonprofit educational software company, Halcydonia Interactive, which created free interactive adventure games for kids. I’d grown up playing these games, all of which were set in the magical kingdom of Halcydonia. Morrow’s games had transported me out of my grim surroundings as a lonely kid growing up in the stacks. They’d also taught me how to do math and solve puzzles while building my self-esteem. In a way, the Morrows were among my very first teachers.Read more at location 2156

B004J4WKUQ 323936 Note: Add a note

No, I thought. You’re going to turn it into a fascist corporate theme park where the few people who can still afford the price of admission no longer have an ounce of freedom.Read more at location 2496

B004J4WKUQ 374554 Note: Add a note

The way I saw it, there were really only two possibilities: Either they were bluffing or they were going to kill me, whether I helped them or not.Read more at location 2597

B004J4WKUQ 389609 Note: Add a note

When I heard about the Sixers this morning, I decided to hide an uplink camera in some trees near the tomb entrance, to keep an eye on the area.” She opened a vidfeed window in the air in front of her and spun it around so the rest of us could see.Read more at location 2726

B004J4WKUQ 409044 Note: Add a note

“Actually, they’ve put up two force fields,” Art3mis said. “A small field with a larger field over it. They lower them in sequence, whenever they want to let more Sixers enter the tomb. Like an air lock.” She pointed to the window. “Watch. They’re doing it now.”Read more at location 2735

B004J4WKUQ 410450 Note: Add a note

Once my new identity was set up, I began searching the Columbus classifieds for a suitable apartment and found a relatively inexpensive room in an old high-rise hotel, a relic from the days when people physically traveled for business and pleasure.Read more at location 2954

B004J4WKUQ 443308 Note: Add a note

My apartment was on the forty-second floor, number 4211. The security lock mounted outside required another retinal scan. Then the door slid open and the interior lights switched on. There was no furniture in the cube-shaped room, and only one window. I stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Then I made a silent vow not to go outside again until I had completed my quest. I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg.Read more at location 2983

B004J4WKUQ 447891 Note: Add a note

Art3mis: So I’m supposed to believe you’re one of those mythical guys who only cares about a woman’s personality, and not about the package it comes in?Read more at location 3021

B004J4WKUQ 453286 Note: Add a note

I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.Read more at location 3140

B004J4WKUQ 471045 Note: Add a note

At times, I’d slip into a kind of trance, sitting with my eyes closed, oblivious to the passage of time, listening to the sounds of the world outside my room.Read more at location 3386

B004J4WKUQ 507966 Note: Add a note

Capitalism would inch forward, without my actually having to interact face-to-face with another human being. Which was exactly how I preferred it, thank you.Read more at location 3394

B004J4WKUQ 509211 Note: Add a note

The real world looked washed-out and blurry by comparison.Read more at location 3419

B004J4WKUQ 512798 Note: Add a note

The Olfatrix smell tower in the corner was capable of generating over two thousand discernible odors. A rose garden, salty ocean wind, burning cordite—the tower could convincingly re-create them all.Read more at location 3423

B004J4WKUQ 513590 Note: Add a note

On the floor, directly underneath my suspended haptic chair, was my Okagami Runaround omnidirectional treadmill. (“No matter where you go, there you are” was the manufacturer’s slogan.)Read more at location 3427

B004J4WKUQ 514229 Note: Add a note

I would argue that masturbation is the human animal’s most important adaptation. The very cornerstone of our technological civilization. Our hands evolved to grip tools, all right—including our own. You see, thinkers, inventors, and scientists are usually geeks, and geeks have a harder time getting laid than anyone. Without the built-in sexual release valve provided by masturbation, it’s doubtful that early humans would have ever mastered the secrets of fire or discovered the wheel. And you can bet that Galileo, Newton, and Einstein never would have made their discoveries if they hadn’t first been able to clear their heads by slapping the salami (or “knocking a few protons off the old hydrogen atom”). The same goes for Marie Curie. Before she discovered radium, you can be certain she first discovered the little man in the canoe.Read more at location 3443

B004J4WKUQ 517236 Note: Add a note

Max made a pouty face and spun around to face the shifting digital wallpaper behind him—currently a pattern of multicolored vector lines.Read more at location 3474

B004J4WKUQ 521111 Note: Add a note

When the two months ended and I was finally given the option to disable the fitness lockout, I decided to keep it in place. Now, exercising was a part of my daily ritual.Read more at location 3504

B004J4WKUQ 525641 Note: Add a note

Those people were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and everyone knew it.Read more at location 3559

B004J4WKUQ 533829 Note: Add a note

Besides, now that everyone could vote from home, via the OASIS, the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists.Read more at location 3559

B004J4WKUQ 534002 Note: Add a note

The vast wasteland of television programming had finally reached its zenith, and the average person was no longer limited to fifteen minutes of fame. Now everyone could be on TV, every second of every day, whether or not anyone was watching.Read more at location 3578

B004J4WKUQ 536853 Note: Add a note

Recently, she’d also launched her own wildly successful clothing line for full-figured female avatars, under the label Art3Miss. She was doing really well for herself.Read more at location 3594

B004J4WKUQ 539236 Note: Add a note

As with most quests in the OASIS, playing as a team made it easier to defeat the various enemies and complete each of the levels.Read more at location 3636

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After that, the three of us had parted as friends, if not necessarily allies, and I considered that an ample reward for my efforts.Read more at location 3650

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Sitting in first place all that time gave you a false sense of security.Read more at location 3743

B004J4WKUQ 561442 Note: Add a note

I hated the idea of needing something and not having it with me, so I usually ended up carrying enough equipment for three gunters. When I ran out of room on my avatar’s body, I stored the additional gear in my Backpack of Holding.Read more at location 3781

B004J4WKUQ 567359 Note: Add a note

If I’d been hungry, I could have ordered a real slice of pizza at the counter. The order would have been forwarded to a pizza vendor near my apartment complex, the one I’d specified in my OASIS account’s food service preference settings. Then a slice would have been delivered to my door in a matter of minutes, and the cost (including tip) would have been deducted from my OASIS account balance.Read more at location 3886

B004J4WKUQ 583180 Note: Add a note

I was eating some corn chips at the time, so I was using voice commands to operate the image-analysis software.Read more at location 4389

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“For one quarter, Black Tiger lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal.”Read more at location 4483

B004J4WKUQ 672565 Note: Add a note

The song tells the story of an anonymous rebel living in the year 2112, a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed.Read more at location 4570

B004J4WKUQ 685602 Note: Add a note

My haptic suit did its best to simulate the sensation of torrents of falling water striking my body, but it felt more like someone pounding on my head, shoulders, and back with a bundle of sticks.Read more at location 4615

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Our records also show that you are currently unemployed and have therefore been classified as impecunious. Under current federal law, you are now eligible for mandatory indenturement.Read more at location 4723

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I dry-swallowed two of the antianxiety pills I’d ordered in preparation for this day. I’d already taken two earlier that morning, but they didn’t seem to be working.Read more at location 4741

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It occurred to me then that this cop was the first visitor I’d ever had in my apartment in all the time I’d lived there.Read more at location 4780

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They put a hooded winter coat on me in the lobby. They didn’t want me catching pneumonia now that I was company property. A human resource. Then they led me outside, and sunlight hit my face for the first time in over half a year.Read more at location 4797

B004J4WKUQ a1HBHKNRL9WKSO 719698 Note: find statistics which show that clinics are far more effective than incarceration, then have clinics replace prisons Edit

They herded me over to their transport truck. Two new indents already sat in the back, strapped into plastic seats, both wearing visors. People they’d arrested earlier that morning. The dropcops were like garbage collectors, making their daily rounds.Read more at location 4800

B004J4WKUQ 720241 Note: Add a note

This was a complete joke, of course. Indents were never able to pay off their debt and earn their release. Once they got finished slapping you with pay deductions, late fees, and interest penalties, you wound up owing them more each month, instead of less. Once you made the mistake of getting yourself indentured, you would probably remain indentured for life. A lot of people didn’t seem to mind this, though. They thought of it as job security. It also meant they weren’t going to starve or freeze to death in the street.Read more at location 4866

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the Genetic Privacy Act made it illegal for IOI to sample my DNA.)Read more at location 4879

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I continued to mentally torture myself like that until I finally drifted off to sleep.Read more at location 4938

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inane corporate shitcomRead more at location 5009

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He was probably a turncoat—a programmer who intentionally coded back doors and security holes into a system he designed, so that he could later sell them on the black market. It allowed him to get paid for the same job twice, and to salve any guilt he felt about working for a demonic multinational corporation like IOI.Read more at location 5020

B004J4WKUQ 753309 Note: Add a note

I’d spent the past six nights laying siege to the IOI intranet, digging deeper and deeper into the network. I felt like a convict in an old prison movie, returning to my cell each night to tunnel through the wall with a teaspoon.Read more at location 5060

B004J4WKUQ 759202 Note: Add a note

From the looks of it, IOI had been illegally eavesdropping on most of the world’s Internet traffic in an attempt to locate and identify the handful of gunters they considered to be a threat. The only reason they hadn’t been able to locate me was because I’d taken the paranoia-induced precaution of leasing a direct fiber-optic connection to the OASIS from my apartment complex.Read more at location 5124

B004J4WKUQ 768894 Note: Add a note

Before my arrest, I’d set up a timed funds transfer that would deposit enough money in my IOI credit account to pay off my entire debt, forcing IOI to release me from indenturement.Read more at location 5143

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The hab-unit door irised open at my feet.Read more at location 5170

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I hailed an autocab outside the Mailbox, making sure to select one operated by a local cab company and not a SupraCab, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of IOI.Read more at location 5230

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Both items were “dichotomy wear,” meaning they were wired for OASIS use. They didn’t have haptics, but the pants and shirt could link up with my portable immersion rig, letting it know what I was doing with my torso, arms, and legs, making it easier to control my avatar than with a gloves-only interface. I also bought a few packs of socks and underwear, a simulated leather jacket, a pair of boots, and a black knit-wool cap to cover my freezing, stubble-covered noggin.Read more at location 5236

B004J4WKUQ 785766 Note: Add a note

I pressed a small button set into the barrel and the gun emitted a tone. I held the pistol grip firmly for a few seconds, first in my right hand, then my left. The weapon emitted a second tone, letting me know it had finished scanning my handprints. I was now the only person who could fire it.Read more at location 5254

B004J4WKUQ 788320 Note: Add a note

“Just before he died, I promised Jim that, in his absence, I would do everything I could to protect the spirit and integrity of his contest. That’s why I’m here.”Read more at location 5510

B004J4WKUQ 826548 Note: Add a note

In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.Read more at location 5632

B004J4WKUQ 845106 Note: Add a note

I usually only stop moving when the RV’s batteries need to recharge.”Read more at location 5648

B004J4WKUQ 847134 Note: Add a note

As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We’d known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.Read more at location 5648

B004J4WKUQ 847657 Note: Add a note

Aech must have thought I was brown-nosing, because she snickered throughout my stammering monologue, but Og was very cool about it. “That’s wonderful to hear,” he said, seeming genuinely pleased. “My wife and I were very proud of those games. I’m so glad you have fond memories of them.”Read more at location 5697

B004J4WKUQ 854800 Note: Add a note

(Even though I now knew Aech was actually a female in real life, her avatar was still male, so I decided to continue to refer to him as such.)Read more at location 5803

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I could hear paper rustling. It sounded like she was flipping through the pages of an actual book.Read more at location 6199

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a message informed me that I’d received a bonus for my accent and inflection.Read more at location 6293

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Like my old man, I’d spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality.Read more at location 6627

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The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerrilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the United States—drugs that were making their way onto the streets of inner-city black neighborhoods in the form of crack cocaine. The CIA also admitted that, in the midst of the War on Drugs, it blocked law enforcement efforts to investigate illegal drug networks that were helping to fund its covert war in Nicaragua.Read more at location 283

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In fact, the War on Drugs began at a time when illegal drug use was on the decline.Read more at location 291

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The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the United States, the rate is roughly eight times that, or 750 per 100,000.Read more at location 295

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The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.Read more at location 299

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In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.Read more at location 300

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Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates.Read more at location 303

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If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color.11 That is not what one would guess, however, when entering our nation’s prisons and jails, which are over-flowing with black and brown drug offenders.Read more at location 304

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Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.Read more at location 313

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“the prison, the reformatory and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.”Read more at location 334

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This book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow and that all those who care about social justice should fully commit themselves to dismantling this new racial caste system.Read more at location 395

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I use the term racial caste in this book the way it is used in common parlance to denote a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom.Read more at location 413

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The term mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison.Read more at location 420

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To put the matter starkly: The current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy.Read more at location 433

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The current system of control depends on black exceptionalism; it is not disproved or undermined by it.Read more at location 442

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The system of mass incarceration is based on the prison label, not prison time.Read more at location 454

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end with nervous laughter.Read more at location 474

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This feat has been achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American totem pole.Read more at location 491

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people of color are actually no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes and many other offenses than whites.Read more at location 502

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Even Tom Watson, who had been among the most forceful advocates for an interracial alliance of farmers, concluded that Populist principles could never be fully embraced by the South until blacks were eliminated from politics.Read more at location 828

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The blatant contradiction between the country’s opposition to the crimes of the Third Reich against European Jews and the continued existence of a racial caste system in the United States was proving embarrassing, severely damaging the nation’s credibility as leader of the “free world.”Read more at location 856

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For more than a decade—from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s—conservatives systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime.Read more at location 954

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As the rules of acceptable discourse changed, however, segregationists distanced themselves from an explicitly racist agenda. They developed instead the racially sanitized rhetoric of “cracking down on crime”—rhetoric that is now used freely by politicians of every stripe.Read more at location 999

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Members of Congress who voted against civil rights measures proactively designed crime legislation and actively fought for their proposals.”Read more at location 1007

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the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined “others”—the undeserving.Read more at location 1141

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Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.Read more at location 1144

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inner-city residents increased incentives to sell drugs—most notably crack cocaine.Read more at location 1176

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Numerous paths were available to us, as a nation, in the wake of the crack crisis, yet for reasons traceable largely to racial politics and fear mongering we chose war. Conservatives found they could finally justify an all-out war on an “enemy” that had been racially defined years before.Read more at location 1189

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Until 1988, one year of imprisonment had been the maximum for possession of any amount of any drug.Read more at location 1232

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Among whites, those expressing the highest degree of concern about crime also tend to oppose racial reform, and their punitive attitudes toward crime are largely unrelated to their likelihood of victimization.Read more at location 1238

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The level of public concern about crime and drugs was only weakly correlated with actual crime rates, but highly correlated with political initiatives, campaigns, and partisan appeals.Read more at location 1256

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funding that had once been used for public housing was being redirected to prison construction.Read more at location 1302

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During Clinton’s tenure, Washington slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent) and boosted corrections by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the urban poor.”Read more at location 1303

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These television shows, especially those that romanticize drug-law enforcement, are the modern-day equivalent of the old movies portraying happy slaves, the fictional gloss placed on a brutal system of racialized oppression and control.Read more at location 1330

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Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs.Read more at location 1346

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arrests for marijuana possession—a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol—accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.Read more at location 1353

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Known as the stop-and-frisk rule, the Terry decision stands for the proposition that, so long as a police officer has “reasonable articulable suspicion” that someone is engaged in criminal activity and dangerous, it is constitutionally permissible to stop, question, and frisk him or her—even in the absence of probable cause.Read more at location 1408

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“grant[ing] police greater power than a magistrate [judge] is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.”Read more at location 1411

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The Court long ago acknowledged that effective use of consent searches by the police depends on the ignorance (and powerlessness) of those who are targeted.Read more at location 1469

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In other words, consent searches are valuable tools for the police only because hardly anyone dares to say no.Read more at location 1473

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Allowing the police to use minor traffic violations as a pretext for baseless drug investigations would permit them to single out anyone for a drug investigation without any evidence of illegal drug activity whatsoever. That kind of arbitrary police conduct is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit.Read more at location 1498

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In an effort to provide some minimal protection for motorists, the Ohio court adopted a bright-line rule, that is, an unambiguous requirement that officers tell motorists they are free to leave before asking for consent to search their vehicles. At the very least, the justices reasoned, motorists should know they have the right to refuse consent and to leave, if they so choose.Read more at location 1512

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It has been estimated that 95 percent of Pipeline stops yield no illegal drugs.27 One study found that up to 99 percent of traffic stops made by federally funded narcotics task forces result in no citation and that 98 percent of task-force searches during traffic stops are discretionary searches in which the officer searches the car with the driver’s verbal “consent” but has no other legal authority to do so.Read more at location 1564

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“in practice, the drug-courier profile is a scattershot hodgepodge of traits and characteristics so expansive that it potentially justifies stopping anybody and everybody.”Read more at location 1572

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Drug use and abuse is nothing new; in fact, it was on the decline, not on the rise, when the War on Drugs began.Read more at location 1592

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Huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement agencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top priority. The new system of control is traceable, to a significant degree, to a massive bribe offered to state and local law enforcement by the federal government.Read more at location 1606

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Once the property was seized, the owner had no right of counsel, and the burden was placed on him to prove the property’s “innocence.”Read more at location 1724

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Drug-war forfeiture laws are frequently used to allow those with assets to buy their freedom, while drug users and small-time dealers with few assets to trade are subjected to lengthy prison terms.Read more at location 1733

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Some of the most widely cited examples involved wealthy whites whose property was seized.Read more at location 1766

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Once the government meets this minimal burden, the burden then shifts to the owner to prove that she “did not know of the conduct giving rise to the forfeiture” or that she did “all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use of the property.” This means, for example, that a woman who knew that her husband occasionally smoked pot could have her car forfeited to the government because she allowed him to use her car. Because the “car” was guilty of transporting someone who had broken a drug law at some time, she could legally lose her only form of transportation, even though she herself committed no crime. Indeed, women who are involved in some relationship with men accused of drug crimes, typically husbands or boyfriends, are among the most frequent claimants in forfeiture proceedings.Read more at location 1784

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Approximately 80 percent of criminal defendants are indigent and thus unable to hire a lawyer.Read more at location 1841

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And in Wisconsin, more than 11,000 poor people go to court without representation every year because anyone who earns more than $3,000 per year is considered able to afford a lawyer.Read more at location 1849

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“All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring. Sometimes the proceedings reflect little or no recognition that the accused is mentally ill or does not adequately understand English. The fundamental right to a lawyer that Americans assume applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the United States.”Read more at location 1855

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Though it is not widely known, the prosecutor is the most powerful law enforcement official in the criminal justice system.Read more at location 1878

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The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against a defendant than can realistically be proven in court, so long as probable cause arguably exists—a practice known as overcharging.Read more at location 1883

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The typical mandatory sentence for a first-time drug offense in federal court is five or ten years. By contrast, in other developed countries around the world, a first-time drug offense would merit no more than six months in jail, if jail time is imposed at all.Read more at location 1891

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Harsh sentencing laws encourage people to snitch.Read more at location 1900

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The “assistance” provided by snitches is notoriously unreliable, as studies have documented countless informants who have fabricated stories about drug-related and other criminal activity in exchange for money or leniency in their pending criminal cases.Read more at location 1905

B0067NCQVU 286004 Note: Add a note

In 1982, the Supreme Court upheld forty years of imprisonment for possession and an attempt to sell 9 ounces of marijuana.Read more at location 1939

B0067NCQVU 290900 Note: Add a note

Andrade’s sentence [for stealing videotapes] is not grossly disproportionate, the principle has no meaning.”Read more at location 1955

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In this system of control, failing to cope well with one’s exile status is treated like a crime.Read more at location 2043

B0067NCQVU 306536 Note: Add a note

Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino.Read more at location 2092

B0067NCQVU 313865 Note: Add a note

People of all races use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates.10 If there are significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than people of color.11 One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students.Read more at location 2099

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The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction.Read more at location 2121

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As numerous researchers have shown, violent crime rates have fluctuated over the years and bear little relationship to incarceration rates—which have soared during the past three decades regardless of whether violent crime was going up or down.23 Today violent crime rates are at historically low levels, yet incarceration rates continue to climb.Read more at location 2142

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Murder convictions tend to receive a tremendous amount of media attention, which feeds the public’s sense that violent crime is rampant and forever on the rise.Read more at location 2146

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Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order.Read more at location 2221

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Early in the 1980s, the typical cocaine-related story focused on white recreational users who snorted the drug in its powder form. These stories generally relied on news sources associated with the drug treatment industry, such as rehabilitation clinics, and emphasized the possibility of recovery. By 1985, however, as the War on Drugs moved into high gear, this frame was supplanted by a new “siege paradigm,” in which transgressors were poor, nonwhite users and dealers of crack cocaine.Read more at location 2224

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Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups.39 These results contrast sharply with the reality of drug crime in America. African Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and they constitute roughly the same percentage today. Whites constituted the vast majority of drug users then (and now), but almost no one pictured a white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like. The same group of respondents also perceived the typical drug trafficker as black.Read more at location 2243

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60 percent of viewers who saw a story with no image falsely recalled seeing one, and 70 percent of those viewers believed the perpetrator to be African American.Read more at location 2252

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The Court’s answer was that racial bias would be tolerated—virtually to any degree—so long as no one admitted it.Read more at location 2322

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A conviction for the sale of five hundred grams of powder cocaine triggers a five-year mandatory sentence, while only five grams of crack triggers the same sentence.Read more at location 2375

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The fact that most of the evidence in support of any disparity had since been discredited was deemed irrelevant;Read more at location 2384

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Armstrong’s lawyers found it puzzling that no white crack offenders had been charged, given that most crack offenders are white.Read more at location 2443

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Numerous studies have shown that prosecutors interpret and respond to identical criminal activity differently based on the race of the offender.Read more at location 2479

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A report in 2000 observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.Read more at location 2487

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Clearly, what offended the U.S. Supreme Court was not the exclusion of blacks from jury service per se, but rather doing so openly and explicitly. That orientation continues to hold today.Read more at location 2539

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The theory is that black and Latino drug users are more likely than white users to obtain illegal drugs in public spaces that are visible to the police, and therefore it is more efficient and convenient for the police to concentrate their efforts on open-air drug markets in ghetto communities.Read more at location 2643

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Many also admit that a predictable consequence of breaking up one drug ring is a slew of violence as others fight for control of the previously stabilized market.Read more at location 2653

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The conventional wisdom—that “get tough” tactics are a regrettable necessity in poor communities of color and that efficiency requires the drug war to be waged in the most vulnerable neighborhoods—turns out to be, as many have long suspected, nothing more than wartime propaganda, not sound policy.Read more at location 2658

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The authors found that it was untrue stereotypes about crack markets, crack dealers, and crack babies—not facts—that were driving discretionary decision making by the Seattle Police Department.Read more at location 2667

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Thus, when prosecutors throw the book at black repeat offenders or when police stalk ex-offenders and subject them to regular frisks and searches on the grounds that it makes sense to “watch criminals closely,” they are often exacerbating racial disparities created by the discretionary decision to wage the War on Drugs almost exclusively in poor communities of color.Read more at location 2777

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The former New Jersey attorney general dubbed this phenomenon the “circular illogic of racial profiling.” Law enforcement officials, he explained, often point to the racial composition of our prisons and jails as a justification for targeting racial minorities, but the empirical evidence actually suggested the opposite conclusion was warranted. The disproportionate imprisonment of people of color was, in part, a product of racial profiling—not a justification for it.Read more at location 2809

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Although the NYPD frequently attempts to justify stop-and-frisk operations in poor communities of color on the grounds that such tactics are necessary to get guns off the streets, less than 1 percent of stops (0.15 percent) resulted in guns being found, and guns and other contraband were seized less often in stops of African Americans and Latinos than of whites.Read more at location 2851

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After Sandoval, these cases can no longer be brought under Title VI by private litigants. Only the federal government can sue to enforce Title VI’s antidiscrimination provisions—something it has neither the inclination nor the capacity to do in most racial profiling cases due to its limited resources and institutional reluctance to antagonize local law enforcement.Read more at location 2907

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Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living “free” in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow.Read more at location 2939

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When a defendant pleads guilty to a minor drug offense, nobody will likely tell him that he may be permanently forfeiting his right to vote as well as his right to serve on a jury—two of the most fundamental rights in any modern democracy.Read more at location 2961

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Remarkably, under current law, an actual conviction or finding of a formal violation is not necessary to trigger exclusion. Public housing officials are free to reject applicants simply on the basis of arrests, regardless of whether they result in convictions or fines. Because African Americans and Latinos are targeted by police in the War on Drugs, it is far more likely that they will be arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes.Read more at location 3044

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The Court ruled in 2002 that, under federal law, public housing tenants can be evicted regardless of whether they had knowledge of or participated in alleged criminal activity.Read more at location 3057

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According to one survey of state parole agencies, forty of the fifty-one jurisdictions surveyed (the fifty states and the District of Columbia) required parolees to “maintain gainful employment.”20 Failure to do so could mean more prison time.Read more at location 3092

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This concern is supported by ethnographic work suggesting that employers have fears of violence by black men relative to other groups of applicants and act on those fears when making hiring decisions.Read more at location 3181

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Two-thirds of people detained in jails report annual incomes under $12,000 prior to arrest.Read more at location 3237

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about half of European countries allow all incarcerated people to vote, while others disqualify only a small number of prisoners from the polls.Read more at location 3296

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the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged that U.S. disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law.Read more at location 3301

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Following the election, it was widely reported that, had the 600,000 former felons who had completed their sentence in Florida been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have been elected president of the United States rather than George W. Bush.Read more at location 3331

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“One can only assume that most participants in these discussions have had little direct contact with the families and communities they are discussing.”Read more at location 3422

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mass incarceration in Washington, D.C., a city where three out of every four young black men can expect to spend some time behind bars.Read more at location 3424

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are we willing to demonize a population, declare a war against them, and then stand back and heap shame and contempt upon them for failing to behave like model citizens while under attack?Read more at location 3544

B0067NCQVU 531719 Note: Add a note

There is absolutely nothing abnormal or surprising about a severely stigmatized group embracing their stigma. Psychologists have long observed that when people feel hopelessly stigmatized, a powerful coping strategy—often the only apparent route to self-esteem—is embracing one’s stigmatized identity.Read more at location 3547

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As a gay activist once put it, “Only by fully embracing the stigma itself can one neutralize the sting and make it laughable.”Read more at location 3552

B0067NCQVU 532836 Note: Add a note

For those black youth who are constantly followed by the police and shamed by teachers, relatives, and strangers, embracing the stigma of criminality is an act of rebellion—an attempt to carve out a positive identity in a society that offers them little more than scorn, contempt, and constant surveillance.Read more at location 3554

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baggy pants (a fashion trend that mimics prison-issue pants)Read more at location 3585

B0067NCQVU 537683 Note: Add a note

Like the minstrel shows of the slavery and Jim Crow eras, today’s displays are generally designed for white audiences. The majority of consumers of gangsta rap are white, suburban teenagers.Read more at location 3596

B0067NCQVU 539572 Note: Add a note

As the saying goes, “You gotta hate the crime, but love the criminal.” This is not a mere platitude; it is a prescription for liberation. If we had actually learned to show love, care, compassion, and concern across racial lines during the Civil Rights Movement—rather than go colorblind—mass incarceration would not exist today.Read more at location 3665

B0067NCQVU 549979 Note: Add a note

More African American adults are under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.Read more at location 3714

B0067NCQVU 557185 Note: Add a note

Today, the political fanfare and the vehement, racialized rhetoric regarding crime and drugs are no longer necessary. Mass incarceration has been normalized, and all of the racial stereotypes and assumptions that gave rise to the system are now embraced (or at least internalized) by people of all colors, from all walks of life, and in every major political party.Read more at location 3732

B0067NCQVU 560142 Note: Add a note

most people assume that racism, and racial systems generally, are fundamentally a function of attitudes. Because mass incarceration is officially colorblind, it seems inconceivable that the system could function much like a racial caste system. The widespread and mistaken belief that racial animus is necessary for the creation and maintenance of racialized systems of social control is the most important reason that we, as a nation, have remained in deep denial.Read more at location 3771

B0067NCQVU 566018 Note: Add a note

Only when we view the cage from a distance can we disengage from the maze of rationalizations that are offered for each wire and see how the entire apparatus operates to keep African Americans perpetually trapped.Read more at location 3811

B0067NCQVU 571823 Note: Add a note

The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer concerned primarily with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed. Prior drug wars were ancillary to the prevailing caste system. This time the drug war is the system of control.Read more at location 3873

B0067NCQVU 581124 Note: Add a note

In Chicago (as in other cities across the United States), young black men are more likely to go to prison than to college.Read more at location 3909

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Jim Crow and mass incarceration have similar political origins. As described in chapter 1, both caste systems were born, in part, due to a desire among white elites to exploit the resentments, vulnerabilities, and racial biases of poor and working-class whites for political or economic gain.Read more at location 3930

B0067NCQVU 589683 Note: Add a note

Formally race-neutral devices were adopted to achieve the goal of an all-white electorate without violating the terms of the Fifteenth Amendment. The devices worked quite well. Because African Americans were poor, they frequently could not pay poll taxes. And because they had been denied access to education, they could not pass literacy tests. Grandfather clauses allowed whites to vote even if they couldn’t meet the requirements, as long as their ancestors had been able to vote. Finally, because blacks were disproportionately charged with felonies—in fact, some crimes were specifically defined as felonies with the goal of eliminating blacks from the electorate—felony disenfranchisement laws effectively suppressed the black vote as well.Read more at location 3955

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These figures may understate the impact of felony disenfranchisement, because they do not take into account the millions of ex-felons who cannot vote in states that require ex-felons to pay fines or fees before their voting rights can be restored—the new poll tax. As legal scholar Pamela Karlan has observed, “felony disenfranchisement has decimated the potential black electorate.”Read more at location 3968

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It is worthy of note, however, that the exclusion of black voters from polling booths is not the only way in which black political power has been suppressed. Another dimension of disenfranchisement echoes not so much Jim Crow as slavery. Under the usual-residence rule, the Census Bureau counts imprisoned individuals as residents of the jurisdiction in which they are incarcerated. Because most new prison construction occurs in predominately white, rural areas, white communities benefit from inflated population totals at the expense of the urban, overwhelmingly minority communities from which the prisoners come.35 This has enormous consequences for the redistricting process. White rural communities that house prisons wind up with more people in state legislatures representing them, while poor communities of color lose representatives because it appears their population has declined. This policy is disturbingly reminiscent of the three-fifths clause in the original Constitution, which enhanced the political clout of slaveholding states by including 60 percent of slaves in the population base for calculating Congressional seats and electoral votes, even though they could not vote.Read more at location 3971

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Bars and walls keep hundreds of thousands of black and brown people away from mainstream society—a form of apartheid unlike any the world has ever seen.Read more at location 4019

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The racially segregated, poverty-stricken ghettos that exist in inner-city communities across America would not exist today but for racially biased government policies for which there has never been meaningful redress.Read more at location 4046

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African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct. In fact, studies suggest that white professionals may be the most likely of any group to have engaged in illegal drug activity in their lifetime, yet they are the least likely to be made criminals.Read more at location 4058

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As we have seen in earlier chapters, the conflation of blackness with crime did not happen organically; rather, it was constructed by political and media elites as part of the broad project known as the War on Drugs.Read more at location 4088

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“How can you tell us we can be anything when they treat us like we’re nothing?”Read more at location 4114

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its core, then, mass incarceration, like Jim Crow, is a “race-making institution.” It serves to define the meaning and significance of race in America.Read more at location 4122

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Some scholars and commentators have pointed out that the racial violence once associated with brutal slave masters or the Ku Klux Klan has been replaced, to some extent, by violence perpetrated by the state. Racial violence has been rationalized, legitimated, and channeled through our criminal justice system; it is expressed as police brutality, solitary confinement, and the discriminatory and arbitrary imposition of the death penalty.Read more at location 4160

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the inclusion of some whites in the system of control is essential to preserving the image of a colorblind criminal justice system and maintaining our self-image as fair and unbiased people.Read more at location 4206

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punishment becomes more severe when drug use is associated with people of color but softens when it is associated with whites.Read more at location 4255

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The history of marijuana policy is a good example. In the early 1900s, marijuana was perceived—rightly or wrongly—as a drug used by blacks and Mexican Americans, leading to the Boggs Act of the 1950s, penalizing first-time possession of marijuana with a sentence of two to five years in prison.68 In the 1960s, though, when marijuana became associated with the white middle class and college kids, commissions were promptly created to study whether marijuana was really as harmful as once thought. By 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act differentiated marijuana from other narcotics and lowered federal penalties.69 The same drug that had been considered fearsome twenty years earlier, when associated with African Americans and Latinos, was refashioned as a relatively harmless drug when associated with whites.Read more at location 4257

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the drug war has not been aimed at rooting out the most violent drug traffickers, or so-called kingpins. The vast majority of those arrested for drug crimes are not charged with serious offenses, and most of the people in state prison on drug charges have no history of violence or significant selling activity.Read more at location 4288

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Studies have shown that joblessness—not race or black culture—explains the high rates of violent crime in poor black communities. When researchers have controlled for joblessness, differences in violent crime rates between young black and white men disappear.Read more at location 4313

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The fact that black people during Jim Crow were often complicit with the system of control did not mean they supported racial oppression.Read more at location 4328

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In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room.Read more at location 4422

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Du Bois got it right a century ago: “the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.”Read more at location 4449

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In 1954, black and white youth unemployment rates in America were equal, with blacks actually having a slightly higher rate of employment in the age group sixteen to nineteen. By 1984, however, the black unemployment rate had nearly quadrupled, while the white rate had increased only marginally.85 This was not due to a major change in black values, behavior, or culture; this dramatic shift was the result of deindustrialization, globalization, and technological advancement. Urban factories shut down as our nation transitioned to a service economy. Suddenly African Americans were trapped in jobless ghettos, desperate for work.Read more at location 4467

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Lawyers have a tendency to identify and concentrate on problems they know how to solve—i.e., problems that can be solved through litigation. The mass incarceration of people of color is not that kind of problem.Read more at location 4604

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Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Civil rights advocates considered and rejected two other black women as plaintiffs when planning a test case challenging segregation practices: Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith. Both of them were arrested for refusing to give up their seats on Montgomery’s segregated buses, just months before Rosa Parks refused to budge. Colvin was fifteen years old when she defied segregation laws. Her case attracted national attention, but civil rights advocates declined to use her as a plaintiff because she got pregnant by an older man shortly after her arrest. Advocates worried that her “immoral” conduct would detract from or undermine their efforts to show that blacks were entitled to (and worthy of) equal treatment. Likewise, they decided not to use Mary Louise Smith as a plaintiff because her father was rumored to be an alcoholic. It was understood that, in any effort to challenge racial discrimination, the litigant—and even the litigant’s family—had to be above reproach and free from every negative trait that could be used as a justification for unequal treatment.Read more at location 4618

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the notion that the 1990s—the Clinton years—were good times for African Americans, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” is pure fiction. As unemployment rates sank to historically low levels in the late 1990s for the general population, jobless rates among noncollege black men in their twenties rose to their highest levels ever, propelled by skyrocketing incarceration rates.Read more at location 4649

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All of the financial incentives granted to law enforcement to arrest poor black and brown people for drug offenses must be revoked. Federal grant money for drug enforcement must end; drug forfeiture laws must be stripped from the books; racial profiling must be eradicated; the concentration of drug busts in poor communities of color must cease; and the transfer of military equipment and aid to local law enforcement agencies waging the drug war must come to a screeching halt.Read more at location 4729

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engagement that promotes trust, healing, and genuine partnership. Data collection for police and prosecutors should be mandated nationwide to ensure that selective enforcement is no longer taking place. Racial impact statements that assess the racial and ethnic impact of criminal justice legislation must be adopted.20 Public defender offices should be funded at the same level as prosecutor’s offices to eliminate the unfair advantage afforded the incarceration machine. The list goes on: Mandatory drug sentencing laws must be rescinded. Marijuana ought to be legalized (and perhaps other drugs as well). Meaningful re-entry programs must be adopted—programs that provide a pathway not just to dead-end, minimum-wage jobs, but also training and education so those labeled criminals can realistically reach for high-paying jobs and viable, rewarding career paths. Prison workers should be retrained for jobs and careers that do not involve caging human beings. Drug treatment on demand must be provided for all Americans, a far better investment of taxpayer money than prison cells for drug offenders. Barriers to re-entry, specifically the myriad laws that operate to discriminate against drug offenders for the rest of their lives in every aspect of their social, economic, and political life, must be eliminated.Read more at location 4736

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In his view, it was a flawed public consensus—not merely flawed policy—that was at the root of racial oppression.Read more at location 4755

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Imprisonment, they say, now creates far more crime than it prevents, by ripping apart fragile social networks, destroying families, and creating a permanent class of unemployables.Read more at location 4811

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As a crime reduction strategy, mass incarceration is an abysmal failure. It is largely ineffective and extraordinarily expensive.Read more at location 4827

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Colorblindness, though widely touted as the solution, is actually the problem.Read more at location 4881

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Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty. It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste.Read more at location 4893

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The colorblindness ideal is premised on the notion that we, as a society, can never be trusted to see race and treat each other fairly or with genuine compassion. A commitment to color consciousness, by contrast, places faith in our capacity as humans to show care and concern for others, even as we are fully cognizant of race and possible racial differences.Read more at location 4933

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The empirical evidence strongly supports the conclusion that declining wages, downsizing, deindustrialization, globalization, and cutbacks in government services represent much greater threats to the position of white men than so-called reverse discrimination.Read more at location 4979

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in many respects African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and riots swept inner cities across America. The child poverty rate is actually higher today than it was in 1968.41 Unemployment rates in black communities rival those in Third World countries. And that is with affirmative action!Read more at location 5000

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There is a fundamental disconnect today between the world of civil rights advocacy and the reality facing those trapped in the new racial undercaste.Read more at location 5024

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far from undermining the current system of control, the new caste system depends, in no small part, on black exceptionalism. The colorblind public consensus that supports the new caste system insists that race no longer matters. Now that America has officially embraced Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream (by reducing it to the platitude “that we should be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin”), the mass incarceration of people of color can be justified only to the extent that the plight of those locked up and locked out is understood to be their choice, not their birthright.Read more at location 5033

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election and appointment of a few black officials cost close to nothing. “White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.”Read more at location 5061

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“How can you say the Oakland Police Department’s drug raids are racist? There’s a black police chief, and most of the officers involved in the drug raids are black.” If the caste dimensions of mass incarceration were better understood and the limitations of cosmetic diversity were better appreciated, the existence of black police chiefs and black officers would be no more encouraging today than the presence of black slave drivers and black plantation owners hundreds of years ago.Read more at location 5087

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Clinton once boasted that the COPS program, which put tens of thousands of officers on the streets, was responsible for the dramatic fifteen-year drop in violent crime that began in the 1990s. Recent studies, however, have shown that is not the case. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office concluded the program may have contributed to a 1 percent reduction in crime—at a cost of $8 billion.54 A peer-reviewed study in the journal Criminology found that the COPS program, despite the hype, “had little or no effect on crime.”55Read more at location 5143

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But if your strategy for racial justice involves waiting for whites to be fair, history suggests it will be a long wait.Read more at location 5233

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No task is more urgent for racial justice advocates today than ensuring that America’s current racial caste system is its last.Read more at location 5245

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Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.Read more at location 286

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Although it may seem difficult to envision the capabilities of a future civilization whose intelligence vastly outstrips our own, our ability to create models of reality in our mind enables us to articulate meaningful insights into the implications of this impending merger of our biological thinking with the nonbiological intelligence we are creating.Read more at location 302

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I discovered that unlike mere tricks, technology does not lose its transcendent power when its secrets are revealed. I am often reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”Read more at location 316

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Often a key advance is a matter of applying a small change to a single formula.Read more at location 332

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Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUERRead more at location 341

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This book will argue, however, that within several decades information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself.Read more at location 373

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By the end of this century, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.Read more at location 384

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There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality.Read more at location 392

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Exponential trends did exist one thousand years ago, but they were at that very early stage in which they were so flat and so slow that they looked like no trend at all.Read more at location 411

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My models show that we are doubling the paradigm-shift rate every decade,Read more at location 416

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To express this another way, we won’t experience one hundred years of technological advance in the twenty-first century; we will witness on the order of twenty thousand years of progress (again, when measured by today’s rate of progress), or about one thousand times greater than what was achieved in the twentieth century.Read more at location 419

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Other projections were equally shortsighted, reflecting contemporary research priorities rather than the profound changes that the next half century will bring.Read more at location 436

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From the mathematician’s perspective, the reason for this is that an exponential curve looks like a straight line when examined for only a brief duration.Read more at location 441

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This may have been a satisfactory approach when a generation of science and technology lasted longer than a human generation, but it does not serve society’s interests now that a generation of scientific and technological progress comprises only a few years.Read more at location 454

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For example, nanotechnology-based manufacturing devices in the 2020s will be capable of creating almost any physical product from inexpensive raw materials and information.Read more at location 472

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First we build the tools, then they build us. —MARSHALL MCLUHANRead more at location 479

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Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order.Read more at location 482

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atomic structures store and represent discrete information.Read more at location 490

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Of all the elements, carbon proved to be the most versatile; it’s able to form bonds in four directions (versus one to three for most other elements), giving rise to complicated, information-rich, three-dimensional structures.Read more at location 493

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Where some see a divine hand, others see our own hands—namely, the anthropic principle, which holds that only in a universe that allowed our own evolution would we be here to ask such questions.Read more at location 497

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This molecule and its supporting machinery of codons and ribosomes enabled a record to be kept of the evolutionary experiments of this second epoch.Read more at location 507

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The third epoch started with the ability of early animals to recognize patterns, which still accounts for the vast majority of the activity in our brains.Read more at location 513

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We have the ability to redesign the world in our own minds and to put these ideas into action.Read more at location 515

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Of course, neither brain size nor computer capacity is the sole determinant of intelligence, but they do represent enabling factors.Read more at location 522

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The attributes that are growing exponentially in these charts are order and complexity,Read more at location 548

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the “dumb” matter and mechanisms of the universe will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence,Read more at location 568

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Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. —IRVING JOHN GOOD, “SPECULATIONS CONCERNING THE FIRST ULTRAINTELLIGENT MACHINE,” 1965Read more at location 586

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Humans call this falling in love, but our biological ability to do this is fleeting and unreliable.Read more at location 669

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Nanobots will interact with biological neurons to vastly extend human experience by creating virtual reality from within the nervous system.Read more at location 707

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Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe.Read more at location 729

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the intelligence that will emerge will continue to represent the human civilization, which is already a human-machine civilization. In other words, future machines will be human, even if they are not biological.Read more at location 739

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GEORGE 2048: We like to think of it as one civilization.Read more at location 798

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NED: Sounds more like a precarious runaway phenomenon. CHARLES: Basically, that’s what evolution is.Read more at location 806

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RAY: I would expect the intelligence that arises from the Singularity to have great respect for their biological heritage. GEORGE 2048: Absolutely, it’s more than respect, it’s … reverence.Read more at location 814

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The further backward you look, the further forward you can see. —WINSTON CHURCHILLRead more at location 859

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[T]here are no hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence.Read more at location 865

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—ELIEZER S. YUDKOWSKY, STARING INTO THE SINGULARITY,Read more at location 867

B000QCSA7C aCW1V49S6OVV6 130221 Note: want to read Edit

One concept of complexity is the minimum amount of information required to represent a process.Read more at location 885

B000QCSA7C 132782 Note: Add a note

One concept of complexity is the minimum amount of meaningful, non-random, but unpredictable information needed to characterize a system or process.Read more at location 913

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Evolution results in better answers, not necessarily more complicated ones.Read more at location 928

B000QCSA7C 139265 Note: Add a note

Information is a sequence of data that is meaningful in a process, such as the DNA code of an organism or the bits in a computer program.Read more at location 931

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Order is information that fits a purpose. The measure of order is the measure of how well the information fits the purpose.Read more at location 936

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To summarize, evolution increases order, which may or may not increase complexity (but usually does).Read more at location 963

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Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution.Read more at location 980

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It is also important to note that the term “information technology” is encompassing an increasingly broad class of phenomena and will ultimately include the full range of economic activity and cultural endeavor.Read more at location 992

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Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process. Indeed, it is the quintessential evolutionary process.Read more at location 1001

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The S-curve illustration shows how an ongoing exponential trend can be composed of a cascade of S-curves.Read more at location 1025

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Each key event, such as writing or printing, represents a new paradigm and a new S-curve.Read more at location 1035

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This does not imply that biological (genetic) evolution is not continuing, just that it is no longer leading the pace in terms of improving order (or of the effectiveness and efficiency of computation).Read more at location 1093

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No communication technology has ever disappeared, but instead becomes increasingly less important as the technological horizon widens. —ARTHUR C. CLARKERead more at location 1120

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The next stage, one highly celebrated in our culture, is invention, a very brief stage, similar in some respects to the process of birth after an extended period of labor.Read more at location 1132

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Here an upstart threatens to eclipse the older technology. Its enthusiasts prematurely predict victory. While providing some distinct benefits, the newer technology is found on reflection to be lacking some key element of functionality or quality. When it indeed fails to dislodge the established order, the technology conservatives take this as evidence that the original approach will indeed live forever.Read more at location 1141

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Everything–including physical products, once nanotechnology-based manufacturing becomes a reality in about twenty years–is becoming information.Read more at location 1210

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In other words, there is a gentle but unmistakable exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth.Read more at location 1301

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It is important to distinguish between the S-curve that is characteristic of any specific technological paradigm and the continuing exponential growth that is characteristic of the ongoing evolutionary process within a broad area of technology, such as computation. Specific paradigms, such as Moore’s Law, do ultimately reach levels at which exponential growth is no longer feasible. But the growth of computation supersedes any of its underlying paradigms and is for present purposes an ongoing exponential.Read more at location 1330

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At present, we are shrinking technology by a factor of about four per linear dimension per decade.Read more at location 1391

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Wolfram postulates that the universe itself is a giant cellular-automaton computer.Read more at location 1426

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An enthusiastic proponent of an information-based theory of physics was Edward Fredkin, who in the early 1980s proposed a “new theory of physics” founded on the idea that the universe is ultimately composed of software.Read more at location 1433

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We should not think of reality as consisting of particles and forces, according to Fredkin, but rather as bits of data modified according to computation rules.Read more at location 1435

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Fredkin believes that the universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem.Read more at location 1453

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Wolfram makes the following point repeatedly: “Whenever a phenomenon is encountered that seems complex it is taken almost for granted that the phenomenon must be the result of some underlying mechanism that is itself complex. But my discovery that simple programs can produce great complexity makes it clear that this is not in fact correct.”Read more at location 1484

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The repetitive application of simple computational transformations, according to Wolfram, is the true source of complexity in the world.Read more at location 1501

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degenerate patternRead more at location 1505

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pure randomness also becomes predictable in its pure lack of predictability.Read more at location 1506

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A completely predictable process has zero order.Read more at location 1514

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, “MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS,” MAN AND SUPERMAN, 1903Read more at location 1622

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The law of accelerating returns is fundamentally an economic theory. Contemporary economic theory and policy are based on outdated models that emphasize energy costs, commodity prices, and capital investment in plant and equipment as key driving factors, while largely overlooking computational capacity, memory, bandwidth, the size of technology, intellectual property, knowledge, and other increasingly vital (and increasingly increasing) constituents that are driving the economy.Read more at location 1635

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We are moving toward more intelligent and smaller machines as the result of myriad small advances, each with its own particular economic justification.Read more at location 1641

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We would have to repeal capitalism and every vestige of economic competition to stop this progression.Read more at location 1647

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Virtually all of the economic models taught in economics classes and used by the Federal Reserve Board to set monetary policy, by government agencies to set economic policy, and by economic forecasters of all kinds are fundamentally flawed in their view of long-term trends.Read more at location 1655

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The predictions are based on linear models of longevity increases and economic growth that are highly unrealistic.Read more at location 1664

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Note that the underlying exponential growth in the economy is a far more powerful force than periodic recessions.Read more at location 1673

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In each case, the economy ends up exactly where it would have been had the recession/depression never occurred.Read more at location 1675

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How do we value the availability of free resources such as online encyclopedias and search engines that increasingly provide effective gateways to human knowledge?Read more at location 1696

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Today’s deflation is a completely different phenomenon, caused by rapidly increasing productivity and the increasing pervasiveness of information in all its forms.Read more at location 1726

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By the end of this decade, computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, with displays built in our eyeglasses, and electronics woven in our clothing, providing full-immersion visual virtual reality.Read more at location 1754

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The need to congregate workers in offices will gradually diminish.Read more at location 1761

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Once we have full-immersion virtual-reality environments incorporating all of the senses, which will be feasible by the late 2020s, there will be no reason to utilize real offices. Real estate will become virtual.Read more at location 1764

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Automation started by amplifying the power of our muscles and in recent times has been amplifying the power of our minds.Read more at location 1784

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So for the past two centuries, automation has been eliminating jobs at the bottom of the skill ladder while creating new (and better-paying) jobs at the top of the skill ladder.Read more at location 1785

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The ladder has been moving up,Read more at location 1786

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Many of these independent technologies can be integrated into computational systems that will eventually approach the theoretical maximum capacity of matter and energy to perform computation and will far outpace the computational capacities of a human brain.Read more at location 1872

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One cubic inch of nanotube circuitry, once fully developed, would be up to one hundred million times more powerful than the human brain.Read more at location 1894

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The Nantero design provides random access as well as nonvolatility (data is retained when the power is off), meaning that it could potentially replace all of the primary forms of memory: RAM, flash, and disk.Read more at location 1915

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The exciting property of spintronics is that no energy is required to change an electron’s spin state.Read more at location 1997

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The potential, then, is to achieve the efficiencies of superconducting (that is, moving information at or close to the speed of light without any loss of information) at room temperature.Read more at location 2003

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Scientists at the University of Oklahoma also demonstrated a “molecular photography” technique for storing 1,024 bits of information in a single liquid-crystal molecule comprising nineteen hydrogen atoms.Read more at location 2018

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A thousand-bit quantum computer would vastly outperform any conceivable DNA computer, or for that matter any conceivable nonquantum computer.Read more at location 2038

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Factoring numbers with more than 512 bits is currently not achievable on a digital computer, even a massively parallel one.Read more at location 2043

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And it is still only Spring. Wait until Summer.Read more at location 2073

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by 2030 it will take a village of human brains (around one thousand) to match a thousand dollars’ worth of computing.Read more at location 2175

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By 2050, one thousand dollars of computing will exceed the processing power of all human brains on Earth.Read more at location 2176

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The fundamental concept is that if you keep all the intermediate results and then run the algorithm backward when you’ve finished your calculation, you end up where you started, have used no energy, and generated no heat. Along the way, however, you’ve calculated the result of the algorithm.Read more at location 2233

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requires energy and generates heat. Generally, error rates are low. But even if errors occur at the rate of, say, one per 1010 operations, we have only succeeded in reducing energy requirements by a factor of 1010, not in eliminating energy dissipation altogether.Read more at location 2272

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I set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability—as 2045.Read more at location 2344

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the physics constant alpha (also called the fine-structure constant), which determines the strength of the electromagnetic force, apparently has changed over two billion years.Read more at location 2424

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the speed of light is inversely proportional to alpha,Read more at location 2425

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Expanding the speed of light is, of course, speculative today, and none of the analyses underlying our expectation of the Singularity rely on this possibility.Read more at location 2436

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Scientific advances are enabled by a technology advance that allows us to see what we have not been able to see before.Read more at location 2501

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The price-performance of computation and communication is doubling every year.Read more at location 2545

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I can’t (yet) quickly access or transmit your knowledge,Read more at location 2556

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My own technical field is pattern recognition,Read more at location 2633

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Duplicating the design paradigms of nature will, I believe, be a key trend in future computing.Read more at location 2635

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we can perform all of the functions of a hybrid digital-analog network with an all-digital computer.Read more at location 2637

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analog computing does have an engineering advantage: it is potentially thousands of times more efficient.Read more at location 2638

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An analog computation can be performed by a few transistors or, in the case of mammalian neurons, specific electrochemical processes. A digital computation, in contrast, requires thousands or tens of thousands of transistors. On the other hand, this advantage can be offset by the ease of programming (and modifying) digital computer-based simulations.Read more at location 2639

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it is not necessary to model every “dimple” on the surface of every dendrite, any more than it is necessary to model every tiny variation in the surface of every transistor in understanding the principles of operation of a computer.Read more at location 2671

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a nonlinearity: some means of creating outputs that are not simple weighted sums of the inputs.Read more at location 2748

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A system that simply creates weighted sums of its inputs cannot perform the essential requirements of computation.Read more at location 2751

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Another key breakthrough occurred in 1949 when Donald Hebb presented his seminal theory of neural learning, the “Hebbian response”: if a synapse (or group of synapses) is stimulated repeatedly, that synapse becomes stronger.Read more at location 2761

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Over time this conditioning of the synapse produces a learning response.Read more at location 2762

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transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which involves applying a strong-pulsed magnetic field from outside the skull, using a magnetic coil precisely positioned over the head. By either stimulating or inducing a “virtual lesion” of (by temporarily disabling) small regions of the brain, skills can be diminished or enhanced.36 TMS can also be used to study the relationship of different areas of the brain on specific tasks and can even induce sensations of mystical experiences.37 Brain scientist Allan Snyder has reported that about 40 percent of his test subjects hooked up to TMS display significant new skills, many of which are remarkable, such as drawing abilities.Read more at location 2836

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Following is a small sample of these emerging imaging and sensing systems.Read more at location 2851

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Each of these terms is actually the title of a story!Read more at location 2966

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“If the mind were simple enough for us to understand, we would be too simple to understand it.”Read more at location 2994

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For some years I have been successfully using the following rule of thumb for scheduling a software task: 1/3 planning 1/6 coding 1/4 component test and early system test 1/4 system test, all components in hand.Read more at location 397

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I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.Read more at location 599

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For a given level of function, however, that system is best in which one can specify things with the most simplicity and straightforwardness.Read more at location 622

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all my own experience convinces me, and I have tried to show, that the conceptual integrity of a system determines its ease of use.Read more at location 658

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If a system is to have conceptual integrity, someone must control the concepts. That is an aristocracy that needs no apology.Read more at location 662

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"Form is liberating." The worst buildings are those whose budget was too great for the purposes to be served.Read more at location 668

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He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.Read more at location 745

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weekly half-day conferenceRead more at location 873

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My main point is that the tradeoffs should usually be skewed further in the direction of “Obvious” than we care to think.Read more at location 273

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(The Back button is the most-used feature of Web browsers.)Read more at location 374

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The answer is that it matters a great deal because while muddling through may work sometimes, it tends to be inefficient and error-prone.Read more at location 412

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I think the answer is simple: If your audience is going to act like you’re designing billboards, then design great billboards.Read more at location 423

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When you’re designing Web pages, it’s probably a good idea to assume that everything is visual noise until proven otherwise.Read more at location 531

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I’m sure that it’s perfectly clear to everyone who works at Symantec that NAV and “Norton AntiVirus” are the same, but it requires at least a small leap of faith on my part.Read more at location 557

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Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. —KRUG’S THIRD LAW OF USABILITYRead more at location 569

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You can—and should—eliminate as much happy talk as possible.Read more at location 597

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The other major source of needless words is instructions.Read more at location 598

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But on the Web, your feet never touch the ground; instead, you make your way around by clicking on links. Click on “Power Tools” and you’re suddenly teleported to the Power Tools aisle with no traversal of space, no glancing at things along the way.Read more at location 681

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In general, if you’re a designer and you think a visual cue is sticking out like a sore thumb, it probably means you need to make it twice as prominent.Read more at location 882

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Trial and error seems to have shown that the best separator between levels is the “greater than” character (>).Read more at location 918

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You want to be relying solely on the overall appearance of things, not the details.Read more at location 1013

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Good taglines convey differentiation and a clear benefit.Read more at location 1196

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A motto expresses a guiding principle, a goal, or an ideal, but a tagline conveys a value proposition.Read more at location 1202

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In most cases, I think the drawbacks of pulldowns outweigh the potential benefits.Read more at location 1276

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Any shared resource (a “commons”) will inevitably be destroyed by overuse.Read more at location 1287

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Things on a Web page don’t always have to make literal sense to be effective, as long as they seem to make sense.Read more at location 1334

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I usually call these endless discussions “religious debates,” because they have a lot in common with most discussions of religion and politics: They consist largely of people expressing strongly held personal beliefs about things that can’t be proven—supposedly in the interest of agreeing on the best way to do something importantRead more at location 1399

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While the hype culture (upper management, marketing, and business development) is focused on making whatever promises are necessary to attract venture capital, users, strategic partners, and revenue-generating deals to the site, the burden of delivering on those promises lands on the shoulders of the craft culture artisans like the designers and programmers.Read more at location 1430

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Testing one user is 100 percent better than testing none.Read more at location 1515

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Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end.Read more at location 1522

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It’s good to do your testing with people who are like the people who will use your site, but it’s much more important to test early and often.Read more at location 1528

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The point of testing is not to prove or disprove something. It’s to inform your judgment.Read more at location 1530

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The main thing you’re looking for in each round of testing is the big, cheap wins.Read more at location 1712

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On the other hand, if the 800 number is in plain sight—perhaps even on every page—somehow knowing that they can call if they want to is often enough to keep people looking for the information on the site longer, increasing the chances that they’ll solve the problem themselves.Read more at location 1778

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I should never have to think about formatting data:Read more at location 1787

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The fact that it’s not a perfect world at the moment doesn’t let any of us off the hook, though.Read more at location 1910

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Don’t ask for a lot of optional information, either. Just the sight of a lot of fields is depressing. Asking for fewer optional items will get you more replies.Read more at location 2032

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The moral is, you can do as much as you want to make your site look good, but only if it’s not at the expense of making it work well.Read more at location 2060

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But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self– complacency? Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.Read more at location 362

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What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal:Read more at location 390

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I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live.Read more at location 396

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I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.Read more at location 409

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Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses — and not herds or believers either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh — those who grave new values on new tables.Read more at location 549

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Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.Read more at location 640

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A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.Read more at location 654

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When a person has been negative to you, and then you do something like that, they’re usually a hundred percent the other way, kind of to compensate. He got me other jobs, and kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying, “He fixes radios by thinking!” The whole idea of thinking, to fix a radio—a little boy stops and thinks, and figures out how to do it—he never thought that was possible.Read more at location 208

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regular symbols—it doesn’t make any difference what symbols you use—but I discovered later that it does make a difference. Once when I was explaining something to another kid in high school, without thinking I started to make these symbols, and he said, “What the hell are those?” I realized then that if I’m going to talk to anybody else, I’ll have to use the standard symbols, so I eventually gave up my own symbols.Read more at location 273

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So that was the difference between the real world and what it looked like.Read more at location 308

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I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.Read more at location 352

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“What’s that!” they exclaimed. “What are you talking about!” I explained to them what I meant and how it worked in this case, and it solved the problem. It turned out it was Bernoulli’s equation that I meant, but I had read all this stuff in the encyclopedia without talking to anybody about it, so I didn’t know how to pronounce anything.Read more at location 420

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I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!Read more at location 465

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I was always a faker, always trying to escape.Read more at location 588

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During the time of making observations in my dreams, the process of waking up was a rather fearful one. As you’re beginning to wake up there’s a moment when you feel rigid and tied down, or underneath many layers of cotton batting.Read more at location 667

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When you’re dreaming, this interpretation department is still operating, but it’s all slopped up. It’s telling you that you’re seeing a human hair in the greatest detail, when it isn’t true. It’s interpreting the random junk entering the brain as a clear image.Read more at location 686

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So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”—which is just another way of saying that you can’t.Read more at location 945

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I began to read the paper. It kept talking about extensors and flexors, the gastrocnemius muscle, and so on. This and that muscle were named, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea of where they were located in relation to the nerves or to the cat. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat.Read more at location 995

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When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The other students in the class interrupt me: “We know all that!” “Oh,” I say, “you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you’ve had four years of biology.” They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.Read more at location 1000

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We were there at the right place, we were doing the right things, but I was doing things as an amateur—stupid and sloppy.Read more at location 1046

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But then a miracle occurred, as it has occurred again and again in my life, and it’s very lucky for me: the moment I start to think about the physics, and have to concentrate on what I’m explaining, nothing else occupies my mind—I’m completely immune to being nervous. So after I started to go, I just didn’t know who was in the room. I was only explaining this idea, that’s all.Read more at location 1112

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Einstein appreciated that things might be different from what his theory stated; he was very tolerant of other ideas.Read more at location 1120

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THE REASON why I say I’m “uncultured” or “anti-intellectual” probably goes all the way back to the time when I was in high school. I was always worried about being a sissy; I didn’t want to be too delicate. To me, no real man ever paid any attention to poetry and such things. How poetry ever got written—that never struck me! So I developed a negative attitude toward the guy who studies French literature, or studies too much music or poetry—all those “fancy” things. I admired better the steelworker, the welder, or the machine shop man. I always thought the guy who worked in the machine shop and could make things, now he was a real guy! That was my attitude. To be a practical man was, to me, always somehow a positive virtue, and to be “cultured” or “intellectual” was not. The first was right, of course, but the second was crazy.Read more at location 1131

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So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.Read more at location 1218

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I tried at one point to make the ants go around in a circle, but I didn’t have enough patience to set it up. I could see no reason, other than lack of patience, why it couldn’t be done.Read more at location 1326

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I loved to tour the Bell Labs. Bill Shockley, the guy who invented transistors, would show me around.Read more at location 1377

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I decided that was too hard for me and went back to Princeton.Read more at location 1443

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my conscience bothered me a little bit because they would all work so hard to explain things to me, and I’d go away without helping them. But I was very lucky. When one of the guys was explaining a problem, I said, “Why don’t you do it by differentiating under the integral sign?” In half an hour he had it solved, and they’d been working on it for three months. So, I did something, using my “different box of tools.”Read more at location 1524

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“When they make a moving picture about this, they’ll have the guy coming back from Chicago to make his report to the Princeton men about the bomb. He’ll be wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase and so on—and here you’re in dirty shirtsleeves and just telling us all about it, in spite of its being such a serious and dramatic thing.”Read more at location 1529

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the experimental physicists had nothing to do until their buildings and apparatus were ready, so they just built the buildings—or assisted in building the buildings.Read more at location 1557

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So I have a great deal of respect for these military guys, because I never can decide anything very important in any length of time at all.Read more at location 1752

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all of which was elementary stuff at Los Alamos, but they had never heard of any of it, so I appeared to be a tremendous genius to them.Read more at location 1755

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You must have been in a situation like this when you didn’t ask them right away. Right away it would have been OK. But now they’ve been talking a little bit too long. You hesitated too long. If you ask them now they’ll say, “What are you wasting my time all this time for?”Read more at location 1772

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We went through our cycle this way until we got all the bugs out. It turned out that the speed at which we were able to do it was a hell of a lot faster than the other way, where every single person did all the steps. We got speed with this system that was the predicted speed for the IBM machine. The only difference is that the IBM machines didn’t get tired and could work three shifts. But the girls got tired after a while.Read more at location 1803

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The real trouble was that no one had ever told these fellow, anything. The army had selected them from all over the country for a thing called Special Engineer Detachment—clever boys from high school who had engineering ability. They sent them up to Los Alamos. They put them in barracks. And they would tell them nothing. Then they came to work, and what they had to do was work on IBM machines—punching holes, numbers that they didn’t understand. Nobody told them what it was. The thing was going very slowly. I said that the first thing there has to be is that these technical guys know what we’re doing. Oppenheimer went and talked to the security and got special permission so I could give a nice lecture about what we were doing, and they were all excited: “We’re fighting a war! We see what it is!” They knew what the numbers meant. If the pressure came out higher, that meant there was more energy released, and so on and so on. They knew what they were doing. Complete transformation! They began to invent ways of doing it better. They improved the scheme. They worked at night. They didn’t need supervising in the night; they didn’t need anything. They understood everything; they invented several of the programs that we used. So my boys really came through, and all that had to be done was to tell them what it was. As a result, although it took them nine months to do three problems before, we did nine problems in three months, which is nearly ten times as fast.Read more at location 1826

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“She’s dead. And how’s the program going?”Read more at location 1876

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The last time he was there, Bohr said to his son, “Remember the name of that little fellow in the back over there? He’s the only guy who’s not afraid of me, and will say when I’ve got a crazy idea. So next time when we want to discuss ideas, we’re not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes, Dr. Bohr. Get that guy and we’ll talk with him first.” I was always dumb in that way. I never knew who I was talking to. I was always worried about the physics. If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy. If it looked good, I said it looked good. Simple proposition. I’ve always lived that way. It’s nice, it’s pleasant—if you can do it. I’m lucky in my life that I can do this.Read more at location 1922

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But, fortunately, it’s been useless for almost forty years now, hasn’t it? So I’ve been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I’m glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.Read more at location 1969

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So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.Read more at location 2436

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You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.Read more at location 2539

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I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they’re offering me some money for it, it’s their hard luck.Read more at location 2543

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“Hah!” I say. “There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.” His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.Read more at location 2565

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The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.Read more at location 2571

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So it worked even with an ordinary girl! But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.Read more at location 2823

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So I learned how to look at life in a way that’s different from the way it is where I come from. First, they weren’t in the same hurry that I was. And second, if it’s better for you, never mind! So I gave the lectures in the morning and enjoyed the beach in the afternoon. And had I learned that lesson earlier, I would have learned Portuguese in the first place, instead of Spanish.Read more at location 2980

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When it was my turn, I got up and said, “I’m sorry; I hadn’t realized that the official language of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences was English, and therefore I did not prepare my talk in English. So please excuse me, but I’m going to have to give it in Portuguese.” So I read the thing, and everybody was very pleased with it.Read more at location 2996

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I got a kick out of succeeding at something I wasn’t supposed to be able to do.Read more at location 3116

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It was a kind of one-upmanship, where nobody knows what’s going on, and they’d put the other one down as if they did know. They all fake that they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude, acting as if it’s not confusing at all, telling him that he’s wasting their time.Read more at location 3192

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I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.Read more at location 3242

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I can’t understand anything in general unless I’m carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go. Some people think in the beginning that I’m kind of slow and I don’t understand the problem, because I ask a lot of these “dumb” questions:Read more at location 3655

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I took her advice, and checked through the whole thing, and found it to be very obvious and simple. I had been afraid to read it, thinking it was too difficult.Read more at location 3720

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It was the first time, and the only time, in my career that I knew a law of nature that nobody else knew.Read more at location 3746

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Since then I never pay any attention to anything by “experts.”Read more at location 3819

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I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.Read more at location 3881

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Everything that I thought was a mistake, he used to teach me something in a positive way. He never said it was wrong; he never put me down.Read more at location 3893

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They kept sending me letters urging me to continue. They were very good.Read more at location 3897

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It was a very ambitious undertaking, and I kept the idea entirely to myself, because the odds were I would never be able to do it.Read more at location 3906

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So the drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.Read more at location 3927

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The reason I felt good about that drawing was, I knew it was impossible to draw well that way, and therefore it didn’t have to be good—and that’s really what the loosening up was all about. I had thought that “loosen up” meant “make sloppy drawings,” but it really meant to relax and not worry about how the drawing is going to come out.Read more at location 3937

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I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.Read more at location 4020

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“The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.” I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? “People read.”Read more at location 4203

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“What profession are you? Surely not a professor.” “I am a professor,” I said. “Of what?” “Of physics—science.” “Oh! That must be the reason,” he said. “Reason for what?” He said, “You see, I’m a stenotypist, and I type everything that is said here. Now, when the other fellas talk, I type what they say, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. But every time you get up to ask a question or to say something, I understand exactly what you mean—what the question is, and what you’re saying—so I thought you can’t be a professor!”Read more at location 4209

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“Don’t you think that order can come from chaos?” “Uh, well, as a general principle, or…” I didn’t understand what to do with a question like “Can order come from chaos?”Read more at location 4244

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The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for “sets”) which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren’t accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous—they weren’t smart enough to understand what was meant by “rigor.” They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn’t understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child.Read more at location 4368

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Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it’s entertaining; if you can’t do it, forget it. There’s no point to it.Read more at location 4378

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They discovered that I was kind of a goldmine: I would tell them, in detail, what was good and bad in all the books; I had a reason for every rating.Read more at location 4401

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When you give books all over the place to people, they’re busy; they’re careless; they think, “Well, a lot of people are reading this book, so it doesn’t make any difference.”Read more at location 4413

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when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.Read more at location 4429

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I knew what was happening, but I made it sound like I was a complete idiot.Read more at location 4524

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Then I thought, “What an error! I should have let all of that stuff operate and keep a diary, so the people of the state of California could find out how far the publishers will go!”Read more at location 4535

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She turned to me and said, “Oh! You’re one of the Nobel-Prize-winners. In what field did you do your work?” “In physics,” I said. “Oh. Well, nobody knows anything about that, so I guess we can’t talk about it.” “On the contrary,” I answered. “It’s because somebody knows something about it that we can’t talk about physics. It’s the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance—gold transfers we can’t talk about, because those are understood—so it’s the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!”Read more at location 4653

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and although I had a feeling of complete disorientation, a feeling of an inability to do practically anything, I never found a specific thing I couldn’t do.Read more at location 4983

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For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.Read more at location 5123

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Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.Read more at location 5126

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But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves—of having utter scientific integrity—is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis.Read more at location 5153

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So I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.Read more at location 5215

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Engineers are typically very poor at user experience design—engineers think in terms of implementation models, but users think in terms of conceptual models.Read more at location 95

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As discussed earlier, the job of the product manager is to define—in detail—the product that the engineering team will build.Read more at location 202

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this model is based on a flawed view of software that holds that you can define high-level requirements independent of detailed requirements and especially the user experience.Read more at location 228

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Regardless of the title or organizational model, I promise you that behind every great product you will find an individual who is responsible for the definition of that product.Read more at location 255

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The most important point for this book is that a train requires active and strong project management which is not tied to specific projects, but rather to the release as a whole.Read more at location 274

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Long story short, for Internet services companies, it is important that the roles be separate.Read more at location 283

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the nature of product management, which is all about discovering a product that is valuable, usable and feasible; versus project management, which is all about executing to deliver that product.Read more at location 286

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There are so many reasons for aimless, unconstructive meetings, but one of the biggest culprits is that it’s not always clear to the participants exactly what the purpose of the meeting is, what problem is to be solved, and what the specific issues or obstacles are. Great project managers understand how to clearly and concisely identify and frame problems and run constructive meetings.Read more at location 304

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Great project managers understand the key role that data plays in informing them about precisely where they are and where they need to go.Read more at location 310

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The great project manager doesn’t make excuses, she makes it happen. She is tireless and unstoppable.Read more at location 321

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The message about the value they deliver is most needed by the teams without designers.Read more at location 333

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A good product requires a good user experience. And a good user experience requires the close collaboration of product management and user experience design.Read more at location 335

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If you’re an enterprise company and you’d like to differentiate your product from your competition, one of the easiest ways to do this is to create a good user experience.Read more at location 353

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If a great product is the result of combining a real customer need with a solution that’s just now becoming possible, then it’s easy to see why the relationship between the product manager and the engineering team is so critical.Read more at location 375

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As product manager, you are responsible for defining the right product, and your engineering counterpart is responsible for building the product right.Read more at location 381

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Specifically, the engineers can be a big help to you as you work to discover a winning product. Remember that they generally know what’s possible better than anyone else.Read more at location 384

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Enlist the help of your engineers in exploring what’s becoming possible as technology develops.Read more at location 388

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your job as product manager is not to define the ultimate product, it’s to define the smallest possible product that will meet your goals.Read more at location 395

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I always try to encourage the best engineers to come try their hand at product management.Read more at location 403

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outsourcing should not be about cost savings—it should be about assembling the right people for the product.Read more at location 445

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there are some terrific sources of outstanding product talent in places such as India, Eastern Europe (especially the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), Northern Europe (especially the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany), Israel, China, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand.Read more at location 449

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Great product managers have a love and respect for good products, no matter where they come from, and they live to create them.Read more at location 517

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The interviewer is not looking so much at whether or not the candidate simply knows the right answer (knowledge rather than intelligence), but rather, how well they deal with not knowing the answer.Read more at location 541

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Another approach is to ask two or three people in your organization who are well known for their intellectual prowess, to interview this person, and help you determine the candidate’s problem-solving ability.Read more at location 546

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Of all the members of the product team, the product manager most needs to reflect the values of the company and the product.Read more at location 561

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The successful product manager sees himself as the CEO of the product.Read more at location 580

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This does not mean that he micromanages the product team, or that he tries to do it all himself, but rather that he is quick to take the blame if something goes wrong, and equally quick to give credit to the rest of the team when it goes well.Read more at location 584

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One reason so many successful product managers come from the engineering ranks is that a big part of defining a successful product is in understanding new technology and seeing how it might be applied to help solve a relevant problem.Read more at location 590

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Much more often, if the features were not there, the product would be better for it as more users could comprehend and appreciate the resulting simpler product.Read more at location 601

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It is absolutely essential to get very skilled at quickly distinguishing that which is important from that which is urgent, and learn to prioritize and plan your time appropriately.Read more at location 607

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They need to be able to converse equally well with engineers about technology as they do with executives and marketers about cost structures, margins, market share, positioning, and brand.Read more at location 642

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It is at least as common that an engineer moves into product management and acquires the business skills required by reading books, taking courses, and getting coaching and assistance from mentors in the finance and marketing organizations.Read more at location 646

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Often these people will approach management asking how they can get more involved in the product.Read more at location 659

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It can be dangerous for a product manager to have too much domain expertise.Read more at location 674

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I have found that the most valuable experience is not what you learn about some product domain or technology (that is probably obsolete now anyway), but rather what you’ve learned about the process of creating great products, leading a product team, and managing growth. It’s also what you’ve learned about yourself and how to improve the next time.Read more at location 690

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With high-tech products, it’s all about how quickly you can learn new technologies and, more importantly, envision how you can apply the new technology to the problems you are trying to solve.Read more at location 697

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When you hire a new product manager to the team, establish a program so that he or she can get the needed exposure to users and technologies.Read more at location 750

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always hire people that you believe are smarter than yourself, and then do everything you can to help them succeed.Read more at location 764

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The head of product management must have a deep and current understanding of the company’s business strategy so that she can ensure the product strategy directly supports the business strategy.Read more at location 768

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in terms of profitability, the most cost-effective sales or marketing program is your own customers doing the sales and marketing work for you.Read more at location 797

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the head of product needs to have a seat at the table on the executive team.Read more at location 831

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Designers are most valuable very early in the process, when the product manager is working to understand the target market and come up with a solution.Read more at location 861

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So the more latitude you can give your engineers and user experience designers in coming up with the solutions to the problems you are trying to solve, the more likely they will come up with something that customers will love.Read more at location 872

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if we depend only on ourselves for the smart ideas, we’re severely limiting our potential universe of smart ideas.Read more at location 877

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Management By Wandering Around.Read more at location 920

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conduct the real meetings before your official meeting. This means going individually to the key influencers and stakeholders prior to the actual meeting and giving them a preview of your points, listening to their issues, and ensuring that they are already on board by the time the group meeting happens. If you do this well, the group meeting should be quick with no surprises. The formal meeting still has an important purpose however, which is for everyone at the table to see that everyone else is on board.Read more at location 959

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Most managers prefer to see your recommendations on how to solve problems you encounter rather than just a statement of the problem. Ideally, depending on the size of the problem, this means an analysis of several alternatives along with your recommendation and rationale.Read more at location 963

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what your manager is anxious to spend his day doing. Don’t try to use your manager as a mentor—find another mentor from outside of your direct management chain.Read more at location 987

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The opportunity assessment should just discuss the problem to be solved, not the particular solution you may have in mind.Read more at location 1022

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not every opportunity needs to be a billion-dollar market.Read more at location 1031

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Improving the product’s usability can significantly reduce the need for customer service staff—and that’s just the cost savings. The even bigger win may be the improvement in customer satisfaction and your corresponding NPS score.Read more at location 1066

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Realize the life of a finance person is largely thankless,Read more at location 1094

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I also have a theory that people in finance are often fairly quiet, and not the type to come to your desk advocating product opportunities. Usually, you’ve got to go to them.Read more at location 1096

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One technique I have found very useful is to always keep two versions of a product going in parallel. In other words, as soon as you start the engineering for release 1.0 and switch into execution mode for that project, then you start up the discovery for release 2.0 in parallel. Always keep that innovation engine working—once a given release goes to engineering, redirect your creative urges to the next release.Read more at location 1126

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Put it up on the white board so that the team can see the exact framework for evaluating the options and making the decision.Read more at location 1244

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The smart product manager will have individually briefed the members of the product council prior to his presentation to learn of any issues and resolve them, so he’s not caught by surprise.Read more at location 1296

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Whatever the reason, if you work at a company where you’re told you can’t talk to your users, my advice is to first try hard to change this policy. If that doesn’t work, dust off your resume and find a place where you can practice your craft and have a shot at creating successful products.Read more at location 1393

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Too frequently product teams write off competitors as clueless, but in my experience every product has at least some things that the product does well, and it’s your job to find these things. Learn from their successes and their mistakes.Read more at location 1453

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Winning products come from the deep understanding of the user’s needs combined with an equally deep understanding of what’s just now possible.Read more at location 1464

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too often focus groups are used for political purposes rather than to get that deep understanding of users that you’re looking for.Read more at location 1486

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If you feel you must conduct focus groups, make sure the product manager attends every one in person. It is okay to delegate the logistics and the facilitation to an outside firm, but do not delegate the interpretation and analysis of the data.Read more at location 1487

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The persona is an archetype description of an imaginary but very plausible user that personifies these traits—especially their behaviors, attitudes, and goals.Read more at location 1495

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The product manager needs that deep understanding of the target user that comes from talking with as many users and customers as possible.Read more at location 1511

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It is an extremely common mistake for a product to try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one.Read more at location 1518

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Personas are a very useful tool for describing to your entire product team who the product is for, how they will use it, and why they will care.Read more at location 1523

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The term “high-fidelity” refers to the fact that this should be a realistic representation of the proposed user experience. Except for the most trivial of user interfaces, I am not a fan of so-called paper prototypes. With the tools available today, it is now so quick, easy, and inexpensive to create a high-fidelity prototype for most products that there is no reason not to do so. This is still a prototype, so it’s fine to fake (simulate) the backend processing and data, so long as the user experience is plausible.Read more at location 1565

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the majority of the product spec should be the high-fidelity prototype, representing the functional requirements, the information architecture, the interaction design, and the visual design of the user experience.Read more at location 1580

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requirements (functionality) and design (user experience design) are intertwined and should be done together.Read more at location 1607

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one thing that many teams try to do in parallel—but should not—is user experience design and implementation.Read more at location 1612

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The requirements and design happen together, and then implementation and test can happen together.Read more at location 1644

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The exception to the rule is when the engineers have a lot of backend infrastructure work to do. In this situation, the engineering team can be working on this while the user experience is being defined. There will be some interdependencies, but they can be managed. If your user experience designers are about to revolt, have your engineers work on the infrastructure for a release cycle or two, as this gives the designers time to work on creating a backlog of good design.Read more at location 1648

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Until recently, there was debate over the relative merits of “highfidelity” prototypes (what I’m describing), versus “low-fidelity” prototypes (essentially paper drawings). Today, I consider this debate meaningless because the cost of high-fidelity prototypes has dropped so low, and the quality of the feedback is so much higher.Read more at location 1732

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The primary reason to create a high-fidelity prototype is to help you gain a much deeper understanding of your product, and—ultimately—so that you can test your ideas with real users before you have your engineering teams take months to go build something that you have no real evidence will serve its purpose.Read more at location 1751

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testing your ideas with real users is probably the single most important activity in your job as product manager.Read more at location 1754

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concentrate on the primary tasks—the ones that users will do most of the time.Read more at location 1794

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rather than start them out at your prototype’s home page, you might instead want to start them out with an empty browser and see what they do.Read more at location 1796

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See if they can tell from the home page or landing page of your prototype what it is that you actually do, and especially what might be valuable or appealing to them.Read more at location 1802

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One technique I like for gauging value is to ask how much the user would be willing to pay for it, even if you have no intention of actually charging for use this way. It’s a way to assess value and—especially—to track how the average value goes up or down over time as you change the prototype.Read more at location 1812

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In fact, in some ways this is preferable to the testing lab because the user feels a lot less like a lab rat and may be more candid and open in his or her responses.Read more at location 1822

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If more than five minutes goes by without the user starting in on the prototype you are talking too much.Read more at location 1849

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If users knew what they really wanted, software would be a lot easier to create.Read more at location 1856

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go ahead and fix it when you feel you’ve identified a problem, even if it’s after only two or three users.Read more at location 1884

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Generally, if you can get through six consecutive users who understand and appreciate the value of the product—and can get through the key tasks—you’re in good shape and you’ve done your job.Read more at location 1885

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all too often these added features just end up making the situation worse and not better.Read more at location 1905

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You and your designers should always try and be one or two sprints ahead of your team.Read more at location 2018

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In the product software world, where the software must sell on its own merits, we introduced the roles of product managers to represent the needs of a wide range of customers, user experience designers to create effective user experiences, and QA testers to ensure the software worked as advertised in the range of customer environments.Read more at location 2085

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Many people (managers, customers/clients, and even some engineers) are reassured by seeing well thought-out and thorough documents and design diagrams. It helps these people to gauge progress towards the end, and it also helps them feel better about the level of thinking that has gone into the project (even though there is no way to test whether or not the confidence is justified because unlike software you can’t execute paper documents). Many people make the mistake of feeling unjustifiably reassured by impressive specifications and documents.Read more at location 2125

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In large organizations, it’s hard to get permission to officially explore ideas. However, once you have proven an idea, it’s remarkably easy to get the project funded.Read more at location 2218

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you don’t just care about whether the software is usable or not. You care about whether or not the software is meeting their needs. Even if it’s usable, do they care? What problem do they really need solved?Read more at location 2232

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Remember: innovation is rarely about solving an entirely new problem. More often it is solving an existing problem in a new way. So watching people struggle with their existing solutions is a great way to highlight innovation opportunities.Read more at location 2233

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Another good source of innovation is to step back, relax your technical constraints for a moment, and consider what the ideal user experience would be for your product.Read more at location 2236

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What is really essential, and what is there just because it’s a side effect of the way the product is designed and built?Read more at location 2238

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Build consensus before important meetings where decisions are required.Read more at location 2300

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In a large company, the need to evangelize never stops. You need to continuously spread the word, explain the vision and strategy, demo the prototype, and share customer feedback. Don’t underestimate the importance of this internal sales function. Make sure everyone even remotely connected with your product understands why the product is important, and how they can help.Read more at location 2321

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people treat their PC like a rental car, but they coddle their Mac like it’s their dream car.Read more at location 2356

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One of the surest ways to derail a product company is to confuse customer requirements with product requirements.Read more at location 2373

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There’s no way that all the good opportunities are gone. In fact, there are more products I’d like to be working today than ever before.Read more at location 2444

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Once you have clearly identified and prioritized the dominant buying emotions your customers bring to your product, focus on that emotion and ask yourself where else they might be able to get that need met? That’s your real competition. In many cases you’ll find that the competition you should be worrying about is not the startup or big portal that’s after the same thing you are, but rather the offline alternative.Read more at location 2464

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angry people dictate the future of technology. I like my product managers to focus on the most miserable thing people have to deal with everyday. If you can solve that problem, that actually changes behavior, and that can lead to the truly big product wins.Read more at location 2474

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In my view, far too many product managers talk in terms of features and technology, and we don’t really talk in terms of the user’s core needs or emotions.Read more at location 2482

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Look for anger, exasperation, and frustration.Read more at location 2522

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the chasm for webcam is actually huge because taking it to the mainstream for webcam means you don’t have much frustration to leverage—you don’t have that driving emotional need.Read more at location 2534

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One technique I use is what I call the “freshman test.” Think back to the first day you walked into high school. You feel more pure emotions of human frailty in that one day than in any other day in your life. You’re small, your hormones are all out of whack, anything you had acheived in your previous school completely gets washed away and you’re a nobody—and you know you’re a nobody. If you can tap into any one of those emotions that every human everyday feels—loneliness, insecurity, fear, frustration, anger—some bit of that freshman thing, then you’re on the right track.Read more at location 2547

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Many teams feel that the visual design of a product or site is not really important. They argue that what matters is the functionality and the value proposition, and that things like nice colors, fonts, icons and layout are just unnecessary and superficial fluff. I strongly disagree with this view, and the more products I see, the stronger I believe in (a) the role that emotion plays in inspiring products, and (b) the direct role visual design plays in creating that emotion.Read more at location 2566

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it is not about controlling customer support costs—it is about ensuring a great customer experience.Read more at location 2606

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It is a big (but common) mistake to optimize for developers over the end-user.Read more at location 2767

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I know this may sound heretical, but it is okay for the developers to work a little harder if the application is something end-users like and use, versus making the developers happy but nobody wants the end result.Read more at location 2768

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One of the most important product discovery techniques is to create a high-fidelity prototype.Read more at location 2802

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Improving a product is not about adding features that customers request; it is about analyzing the product’s actual use, and then relentlessly driving the product to improve the key metrics.Read more at location 2808

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Can I explain the differentiation to a company executive in two minutes?Read more at location 2815

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Virtue untested is no virtue at all or some shit like that, right?Read more at location 164

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You don’t get to order dinner from your car and have it ready in 3 minutes without trading off some shit along the way.Read more at location 184

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It isn’t a party if you do it every fucking day, right?Read more at location 186

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Do it for your asshole; you two have always been close.Read more at location 188

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The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.Read more at location 64

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We might call the subject of these books “nonnumerical analysis.Read more at location 88

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Since the early 1960s, however, computers have been used even more often for problems in which numbers occur only by coincidence; the computer’s decision-making capabilities are being used, rather than its ability to do arithmetic.Read more at location 91

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It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied, “If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it’s a research problem.Read more at location 283

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The reader may choose to read the following subsections carefully, with implicit faith in the author’s assertion that the topics treated here are indeed very relevant; but it is probably preferable, for motivation, to skim over this section lightly at first, and (after seeing numerous applications of the techniques in future chapters) return to it later for more intensive studyRead more at location 674

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Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understandingRead more at location 365

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All artificial things are designed.Read more at location 382

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Experience is critical, for it determines how fondly people remember their interactions.Read more at location 491

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(I explain these ideas in more detail in my book Living with ComplexityRead more at location 570

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">Read more at location 729

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What is missing in all these cases is feedback: some way of letting you know that the system is working on your request.Read more at location 779

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Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.Read more at location 792

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Feedback is essential, but not when it gets in the way of other things, including a calm and relaxing environment.Read more at location 801

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Simplified models are valuable only as long as the assumptions that support them hold true.Read more at location 827

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The designer expects the user’s model to be identical to the design model, but because designers cannot communicate directly with users, the entire burden of communication is on the system image.Read more at location 939

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Now imagine a future where instead of the phone replacing the watch, the two will merge, perhaps worn on the wrist, perhaps on the head like glasses, complete with display screen.Read more at location 983

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the best solution is for there to be agreed upon standards, so we need learn the controls only once.Read more at location 990

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The Gulf of Evaluation reflects the amount of effort that the person must make to interpret the physical state of the device and to determine how well the expectations and intentions have been met.Read more at location 1057

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What are the major design elements that help bridge the Gulf of Evaluation? Feedback and a good conceptual model.Read more at location 1059

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This is called a root cause analysis: asking “Why?” until the ultimate, fundamental cause of the activity is reached.Read more at location 1130

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Levitt stopped too soon.Read more at location 1153

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Once you realize that they don’t really want the drill, you realize that perhaps they don’t really want the hole, either: they want to install their bookshelves. Why not develop methods that don’t require holes? Or perhaps books that don’t require bookshelves.Read more at location 1154

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Do we count our technology as an extension of our memory systems? Of our thought processes? Of our mind?Read more at location 1199

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More and more evidence is accumulating that we use logic and reason after the fact, to justify our decisions to ourselves (to our conscious minds) and to others. Bizarre? Yes, but don’t protest: enjoy it.Read more at location 1229

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A positive emotional state is ideal for creative thought, but it is not very well suited for getting things done.Read more at location 1258

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Too much, and we call the person scatterbrained, flitting from one topic to another, unable to finish one thought before another comes to mind. A brain in a negative emotional state provides focus: precisely what is needed to maintain attention on a task and finish it. Too much, however, and we get tunnel vision, where people are unable to look beyond their narrow point of view. Both the positive, relaxed state and the anxious, negative, and tense state are valuable and powerful tools for human creativity and action.Read more at location 1258

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For designers, the visceral response is about immediate perception: the pleasantness of a mellow, harmonious sound or the jarring, irritating scratch of fingernails on a rough surface. Here is where the style matters: appearances, whether sound or sight, touch or smell, drive the visceral response. This has nothing to do with how usable, effective, or understandable the product is. It is all about attraction or repulsion. Great designers use their aesthetic sensibilities to drive these visceral responses.Read more at location 1291

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“Attractive things work betterRead more at location 1340

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The behavioral level, which is the home of interaction, is also the home of all expectation-based emotions, of hope and joy, frustration and anger.Read more at location 1346

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One important emotional state is the one that accompanies complete immersion into an activity, a state that the social scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has labeled “flow.” Csikszentmihalyi has long studied how people interact with their work and play, and how their lives reflect this intermix of activities. When in the flow state, people lose track of time and the outside environment. They are at one with the task they are performing. The task, moreover, is at just the proper level of difficulty: difficult enough to provide a challenge and require continued attention, but not so difficult that it invokes frustration and anxiety.Read more at location 1371

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even when there is no single causal act, that doesn’t stop people from assigning one.Read more at location 1400

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In most homes, the thermostat is just an on-off switch.Read more at location 1422

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Some studies show it is wise to underpredict—that is, to say an operation will take longer than it actually will. When the system computes the amount of time, it can compute the range of possible times. In that case it ought to display the range, or if only a single value is desirable, show the slowest, longest value. That way, the expectations are liable to be exceeded, leading to a happy result.Read more at location 1464

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Suppose I try to use an everyday thing, but I can’t. Who is at fault: me or the thing? We are apt to blame ourselves, especially if others are able to use it. Suppose the fault really lies in the device, so that lots of people have the same problems. Because everyone perceives the fault to be his or her own, nobody wants to admit to having trouble. This creates a conspiracy of silence, where the feelings of guilt and helplessness among people are kept hidden.Read more at location 1471

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Everyone sometimes acts in a way that seems strange, bizarre, or simply wrong and inappropriate. When we do this, we tend to attribute our behavior to the environment. When we see others do it, we tend to attribute it to their personalities.Read more at location 1475

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Do common technology and mathematics phobias result from a kind of learned helplessness? Could a few instances of failure in what appear to be straightforward situations generalize to every technological object, every mathematics problem? Perhaps. In fact, the design of everyday things (and the design of mathematics courses) seems almost guaranteed to cause this. We could call this phenomenon taught helplessness.Read more at location 1500

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We need to remove the word failure from our vocabulary, replacing it instead with learning experienceRead more at location 1520

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It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.Read more at location 1531

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Eliminate all error messages from electronic or computer systems. Instead, provide help and guidance.Read more at location 1538

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Never make people start over.Read more at location 1541

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It is almost as if they take perverse pride in thinking of themselves as mechanically incompetent.Read more at location 1551

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The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society.Read more at location 1567

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But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error.Read more at location 1570

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Today, we insist that people perform abnormally, to adapt themselves to the peculiar demands of machines, which includes always giving precise, accurate information.Read more at location 1589

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Is Nest perfect? No, but it marks improvement in the collaborative interaction of people and everyday things.Read more at location 1624

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The result may appear to be poor design, but it may actually arise from poor communication.Read more at location 1719

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“Don’t criticize unless you can do better.Read more at location 1721

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How can the designer put knowledge into the device itself?Read more at location 1784

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The more complex the password requirements, the less secure the system.Read more at location 1984

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All the arbitrary things we need to remember add up to unwitting tyranny. It is time for a revolt.Read more at location 2011

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Some things can only be solved by massive cultural changes, which probably means they will never be solved.Read more at location 2014

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Make something too secure, and it becomes less secure.Read more at location 2032

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The strength of a password is actually pretty irrelevant because most passwords are obtained through “key loggers” or are stolen.Read more at location 2037

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Some systems allow for a second, alerting password, so that if the bad guys try to force someone to enter a password into a system, the individual would use the alerting one, which would warn the authorities of an illegal entry.Read more at location 2045

B00E257T6C a2G4TKLZNXYXSL 306937 Note: Bourne Edit

Retention is affected by both time and the number of items. The number of items is more important than time, with each new item decreasing the likelihood of remembering all of the preceding items. The capacity is items because people can remember roughly the same number of digits and words, and almost the same number of simple three- to five-word phrases. How can this be? I suspect that STM holds something akin to a pointer to an already encoded item in long-term memory, which means the memory capacity is the number of pointers it can keep. This would account for the fact that the length or complexity of the item has little impact—simply the number of items. It doesn’t neatly account for the fact that we make acoustical errors in STM, unless the pointers are held in a kind of acoustical memory. This remains an open topic for scientific exploration.Read more at location 2090

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Haptics (touch) is also minimally interfering. To maximize efficiency of working memory it is best to present different information over different modalities: sight, sound, touch (haptics), hearing, spatial location, and gestures.Read more at location 2112

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This is rote learning, the bane of modern existence.Read more at location 2163

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Although some things are appropriate to learn by rote, most are not. Alas, it is still the dominant method of instruction in many school systems, and even for much adult training.Read more at location 2169

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The design implications are clear: provide meaningful structures. Perhaps a better way is to make memory unnecessary: put the required information in the world.Read more at location 2198

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The most effective way of helping people remember is to make it unnecessary.Read more at location 2202

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It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about themRead more at location 2210

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The unaided mind is surprisingly limited. It is things that make us smart. Take advantage of them.Read more at location 2272

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External knowledge is a powerful tool for enhanced intelligence.Read more at location 2424

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Best mapping: Controls are mounted directly on the item to be controlled. • Second-best mapping: Controls are as close as possible to the object to be controlled. • Third-best mapping: Controls are arranged in the same spatial configuration as the objects to be controlled.Read more at location 2495

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Do not be afraid to make mistakes or ask stupid questions. Remember, any problems you have are probably the design’s fault, not yours.Read more at location 2535

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But why couldn’t the past be in front of us and the future behind? Does that sound strange? Why? We can see what is in front of us, but not what is behind, just as we can remember what happened in the past, but we can’t remember the future. Not only that, but we can remember recent events much more clearly than long-past events, captured neatly by the visual metaphor in which the past lines up before us, the most recent events being the closest so that they are clearly perceived (remembered), with long-past events far in the distance, remembered and perceived with difficulty. Still sound weird? This is how the South American Indian group, the Aymara, represent time. When they speak of the future, they use the phrase back days and often gesture behind them. Think about it: it is a perfectly logical way to view the world.Read more at location 2568

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even an adult can put them together.Read more at location 2646

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These four classes of constraints—physical, cultural, semantic, and logical—seem to be universal, appearing in a wide variety of situations.Read more at location 2656

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It is, of course, true that difficulty in inserting keys, batteries, or plugs is not a big enough issue to affect the decision of whether to purchase something, but still, the lack of attention to customer needs on even simple things is often symptomatic of larger issues that have greater impact.Read more at location 2719

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Note that a superior solution would be to solve the fundamental need—solving the root need. After all, we don’t really care about keys and locks: what we need is some way of ensuring that only authorized people can get access to whatever is being locked. Instead of redoing the shapes of physical keys, make them irrelevant.Read more at location 2722

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Extreme sports push the boundaries of what we think of as meaningful and sensible.Read more at location 2754

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Conventions are actually a form of cultural constraint,Read more at location 2777

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The difficulty with activity-based controllers is handling the exceptional cases, the ones not thought about during design.Read more at location 2953

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Forcing functions are the extreme case of strong constraints that can prevent inappropriate behavior.Read more at location 2969

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What was once created as an error message has become an efficient shortcut.Read more at location 2994

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the authors had encountered a new convention for elevators called “Elevator Destination Control.” Many people (including me) consider it superior to the one we are all used to. Its major disadvantage is that it is different. It violates customary convention. Violations of convention can be very disturbing.Read more at location 3047

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When a new way of doing things is vastly superior to another, then the merits of change outweigh the difficulty of change.Read more at location 3115

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If you can’t put the knowledge on the device (that is, knowledge in the world), then develop a cultural constraint: standardize what has to be kept in the head.Read more at location 3224

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The use of sound to convey knowledge is a powerful and important idea, but still in its infancy.Read more at location 3260

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Instead, when an error happens, we should determine why, then redesign the product or the procedures being followed so that it will never occur again or, if it does, so that it will have minimal impact.Read more at location 3369

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We can’t fix problems unless people admit they exist. When we blame people, it is then difficult to convince organizations to restructure the design to eliminate these problems. After all, if a person is at fault, replace the person. But seldom is this the case: usually the system, the procedures, and social pressures have led to the problems, and the problems won’t be fixed without addressing all of these factors.Read more at location 3445

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A major cause of violations is inappropriate rules or procedures that not only invite violation but encourage it.Read more at location 3477

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What is a designer to do? Provide as much guidance as possible to ensure that the current state of things is displayed in a coherent and easily interpreted format—ideally graphical.Read more at location 3730

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Once again, the designer should assume that people will be interrupted during their activities and that they may need assistance in resuming their operations.Read more at location 3781

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Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior, causing otherwise sensible people to do things they know are wrong and possibly dangerous.Read more at location 3809

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Our instructor was very aware of the resulting reluctance of people to take the critical step of releasing their weights when they weren’t entirely positive it was necessary. To counteract this tendency, he announced that if anyone dropped the weights for safety reasons, he would publicly praise the diver and replace the weights at no cost to the person. This was a very persuasive attempt to overcome social pressures.Read more at location 3820

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To adequately address social, economic, and cultural pressures and to improve upon company policies are the hardest parts of ensuring safe operation and behavior.Read more at location 3844

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One paradox of groups is that quite often, adding more people to check a task makes it less likely that it will be done right.Read more at location 3853

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In general, it is bad design to impose a sequential structure to task execution unless the task itself requires it.Read more at location 3880

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In the absence of data, it is difficult or impossible to make improvements. Rather than stigmatize those who admit to error, we should thank those who do so and encourage the reporting. We need to make it easier to report errors, for the goal is not to punish, but to determine how it occurred and change things so that it will not happen again.Read more at location 3890

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Don’t treat the action as an error; rather, try to help the person complete the action properly. Think of the action as an approximation to what is desired.Read more at location 4016

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A major source of error, especially memory-lapse errors, is interruption.Read more at location 4022

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A better check would be a prominent display of both the action to be taken and the object, perhaps with the choice of “cancel” or “do it.Read more at location 4100

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Accidents usually have multiple causes, whereby had any single one of those causes not happened, the accident would not have occurred. The British accident researcher James Reason describes this through the metaphor of slices of Swiss cheese: unless the holes all line up perfectly, there will be no accident. This metaphor provides two lessons: First, do not try to find “the” cause of an accident;Read more at location 4185

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The Swiss cheese metaphor suggests several ways to reduce accidents: • Add more slices of cheese. • Reduce the number of holes (or make the existing holes smaller). • Alert the human operators when several holes have lined up.Read more at location 4208

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With self-driving cars, I predict that we will have fewer accidents and injuries, but that when there is an accident, it will be huge.Read more at location 4281

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When automation fails, it often does so without warning.Read more at location 4289

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Put the knowledge required to operate the technology in the world. Don’t require that all the knowledge must be in the head. Allow for efficient operation when people have learned all the requirements, when they are experts who can perform without the knowledge in the world, but make it possible for non-experts to use the knowledge in the world. This will also help experts who need to perform a rare, infrequently performed operation or return to the technology after a prolonged absence.Read more at location 4325

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One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve. Why such a counterintuitive rule? Because, invariably, the problem I am asked to solve is not the real, fundamental, root problem. It is usually a symptom.Read more at location 4340

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in design, the secret to success is to understand what the real problem is.Read more at location 4343

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The real world is not like the university. In the university, professors make up artificial problems. In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered. It is all too easy to see only the surface problems and never dig deeper to address the real issues.Read more at location 4351

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Engineers and businesspeople are trained to solve problems. Designers are trained to discover the real problems.Read more at location 4354

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I am particularly fond of “stupid” questions. A stupid question asks about things so fundamental that everyone assumes the answer is obvious. But when the question is taken seriously, it often turns out to be profound: the obvious often is not obvious at all. What we assume to be obvious is simply the way things have always been done, but now that it is questioned, we don’t actually know the reasons. Quite often the solution to problems is discovered through stupid questions, through questioning the obvious.Read more at location 4511

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Prototyping during the problem specification phase is done mainly to ensure that the problem is well understood.Read more at location 4536

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How many people should be studied? Opinions vary, but my associate, Jakob Nielsen, has long championed the number five: five people studied individually.Read more at location 4549

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Failures are to be encouraged—actually, they shouldn’t be called failures: they should be thought of as learning experiences. If everything works perfectly, little is learned. Learning occurs when there are difficulties.Read more at location 4562

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Requirements made in the abstract are invariably wrong. Requirements produced by asking people what they need are invariably wrong. Requirements are developed by watching people in their natural environment.Read more at location 4565

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DON NORMAN’S LAW OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT The day a product development process starts, it is behind schedule and above budget.Read more at location 4697

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The way to handle the time crunch that eliminates the ability to do good up-front design research is to separate that process from the product team: have design researchers always out in the field, always studying potential products and customers. Then, when the product team is launched, the designers can say, “We already examined this case, so here are our recommendations.Read more at location 4723

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Sometimes it is simply impossible to build one product that accommodates everyone, so the answer is to build different versions of the product.Read more at location 4804

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For anyone who is considering growing old, I remind you that although physical abilities diminish with age, many mental capacities continue to improve, especially those dependent upon an expert accumulation of experience, deep reflection, and enhanced knowledge.Read more at location 4852

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The best solution to the problem of designing for everyone is flexibility:Read more at location 4861

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Complex things are no longer complicated once they are understood.Read more at location 4881

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Standards can take so long to be established that by the time they do come into wide practice, they can be irrelevant.Read more at location 4963

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Featuritis is an insidious disease, difficult to eradicate, impossible to vaccinate against.Read more at location 5132

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Most companies compare features with their competition to determine where they are weak, so they can strengthen those areas. Wrong, argues Moon. A better strategy is to concentrate on areas where they are stronger and to strengthen them even more.Read more at location 5166

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As for the weaknesses, ignore the irrelevant ones, says Moon. The lesson is simple: don’t follow blindly; focus on strengths, not weaknesses.Read more at location 5169

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Much of daily life is dictated by conventions that are centuries old, that no longer make any sense, and whose origins have been forgotten by all except the historian.Read more at location 5272

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Most startup companies fail, but failure in the high-tech world of California is not considered bad. In fact, it is considered a badge of honor, for it means that the company saw a future potential, took the risk, and tried. Even though the company failed, the employees learned lessons that make their next attempt more likely to succeed. Failure can occur for many reasons: perhaps the marketplace is not ready; perhaps the technology is not ready for commercialization; perhaps the company runs out of money before it can gain traction.Read more at location 5290

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being first does not guarantee success.Read more at location 5471

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Hill climbing. This method is the secret to incremental innovation. This is at the heart of the human-centered design processRead more at location 5489

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What industries are ready for radical innovation? Try education, transportation, medicine, and housing, all of which are overdue for major transformation.Read more at location 5510

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In ancient Greece, Plato tells us that Socrates complained about the impact of books, arguing that reliance on written material would diminish not only memory but the very need to think, to debate, to learn through discussion.Read more at location 5571

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The best chess player in the world today is not a computer or a human but a team of humans and computers working together. In freestyle chess competitions, where teams of humans and computers compete, the winners tend not to be the teams with the most powerful computers or the best chess players. The winning teams are able to leverage the unique skills of humans and computers to work together. That is a metaphor for what we can do going forward: have people and technology work together in new ways to create value.Read more at location 5585

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We are surrounded with objects of desire, not objects of use.Read more at location 5664

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The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.Read more at location 5698

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